So, I once had a contract at an ad agency, which was getting into the business of making software for food-related clients. Our first customer of this sort, was a chain of cupcake stores. Their CEO had just come in from a hamburger chain, and wanted to replace their (functional, bespoke) website and factory (i.e. kitchen) management software, with an outside off-the-shelf solution. We were to make the website and the glue logic to the outside product they had chosen.
The cupcake company's CTO took paternity leave shortly after the project began.
We asked about the back-office software, which interfaced with the kitchens, on a couple of occasions, and were told not to worry about it, the third party standard solution would handle that.
So, with a week to go, the cupcake CEO finally shows the product to his regional managers. They ask, "where's the part that tells us to put make this much of this kind of frosting, and when in the day to do it? and make this much of red velvet cake, starting three hours before it's needed?"
It turns out, the third party solution was for sandwich and burger places, where you would just make the food when it was ordered. For cupcakes, it needed to combine the needs of multiple different orders, take into account how many hours it would take to make each flavor of cake and frosting, and tell the kitchen staff what to do, and when. The cupcake CEO had only ever run a burger place, he had no idea about any of this, and didn't want anybody like the CTO telling him his idea wouldn't work.
So, he asked us if we could update our glue logic to also talk to the old software, so that it would continue to run the kitchens, while the new website took the orders. We said sure, here's how much it would cost.
Oh, he said, we wanted it as part of the previous quote.
The final meeting, wherein we explained that we had done what he had asked us to, was not attended by the cupcake CEO, he sent his new CTO (the old one had quit right after his paternity leave was up). Every permanent employee of my company slipped out, and I, the contractor, was left for the last part, to explain that no, we would not be building any software not in the original quote, for free.
The entire project went into the dump. The former CTO of the cupcake company, started work for the company that had made the original, bespoke software that was still running things.
The cupcake company's CTO took paternity leave shortly after the project began.
We asked about the back-office software, which interfaced with the kitchens, on a couple of occasions, and were told not to worry about it, the third party standard solution would handle that.
So, with a week to go, the cupcake CEO finally shows the product to his regional managers. They ask, "where's the part that tells us to put make this much of this kind of frosting, and when in the day to do it? and make this much of red velvet cake, starting three hours before it's needed?"
It turns out, the third party solution was for sandwich and burger places, where you would just make the food when it was ordered. For cupcakes, it needed to combine the needs of multiple different orders, take into account how many hours it would take to make each flavor of cake and frosting, and tell the kitchen staff what to do, and when. The cupcake CEO had only ever run a burger place, he had no idea about any of this, and didn't want anybody like the CTO telling him his idea wouldn't work.
So, he asked us if we could update our glue logic to also talk to the old software, so that it would continue to run the kitchens, while the new website took the orders. We said sure, here's how much it would cost.
Oh, he said, we wanted it as part of the previous quote.
The final meeting, wherein we explained that we had done what he had asked us to, was not attended by the cupcake CEO, he sent his new CTO (the old one had quit right after his paternity leave was up). Every permanent employee of my company slipped out, and I, the contractor, was left for the last part, to explain that no, we would not be building any software not in the original quote, for free.
The entire project went into the dump. The former CTO of the cupcake company, started work for the company that had made the original, bespoke software that was still running things.