Our customer had a high priority short time frame requirement to fill. They asked if somebody could do the job. The leader of the development team said this could not be done. And the project manager said the customer did not follow the proper procedure in requesting the work.Turns out a consultant took on the task. And who said consultants never actually do any real work? This consultant took on the task, worked hard to get the fix right, and stayed late until it was implemented. In fact the whole consultant team stayed late to ensure that nothing went wrong with the change. True dedication.
Now this was not some charity work. The consultants were billing the customer high priced rates to get this work done. But this translated into the utmost in customer responsiveness. The thing I wondered was how could our company transform into one that delivers service like that. If we can do it at a significantly lower price than the consultants, wouldn't it follow that we would get more work? In fact, our company has lost the contract to maintain the software for this client. Somebody else won the bid with a cheaper price. Could be the result of some bad business decisions. No reason to cry over spilled milk. But we have to learn not to make the same mistake again.
