You ' re negotiating more Often Than Think

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You ' re negotiating more Often Than Think

Michael Nygard

WE ' VE all BEEn hits with Budgetecture. That's when sound technol-ogy choices go out the window in favor of cost-cutting. The conversation goes something like this.
"Do we really need X?" asks the project sponsor.
For "X", you can substitute nearly anything that's vitally necessary to make the system Run:software licenses, redundant Servers, offsite backups, or power supplies. It's always asked with a sort of paternalistic tone, as though the grown-up have caught us blowing all we pocket money on Comic books and Bubble gum, while the serious adults is trying to get on with buying more buckets to carry their profits Around in.
The correct-on-answer is "Yes". We do. " That ' s almost never the response.
After all, we ' re trained as engineers, and engineering are all about making trade-offs. We know good and well this you don't really need extravagances like power supplies, so long as there ' s a sufficient supply of hamster wheels and cheap interns in the data center. So instead of saying, "Yes." We do, "we say something like," Well, you could does without a second server, provided you ' re willing to accept downtime for Routine maintenance and whenever a parity bit flips, causing a crash, but if we get error-checking parity memory then we Get around that, so we just has to worry about the operating system crashing, which it does about every three-point-nine Days, so we'll have the to do nightly restart. The interns can do, whenever they get a break from the power-generating hamster wheels. "
??? Things every software Architect should Know
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?? All of which might are completely true, but are utterly the wrong thing to say. The sponsor stopped listening right after the word "well."
The problem is so you see your part as an engineering role and while your spon-sor clearly understands he's engaged in a n Egotiation. We ' re looking for a col-laborative solution-finding exercise; They ' re looking for a win-lose tactical maneuver. And in a negotiation, the last thing your want to do are make conces-sions on the first demand. In fact, the right response to the ' Do we really need ' question is something like this:
"Without a second server, the whole system would come crashing down at least three times daily, particularly when it ' s unde R heaviest load or when your is doing a demo for the Board of directors. In fact, we really need four servers so we can take the one HA pair down independently on any time while still main-taining 1 00% of our capacity, even in case one of the remaining pair crashes unexpectedly. "
Of course, we both know you don ' t really need the third and fourth servers. This was a counter-negotiating gambit to get the sponsor to the change of the subject to something else. You ' re upping the ante and showing so you ' re already run-ning at the bare, dangerous, nearly irresponsible minimum tole Rable configu-ration. And besides, if you don't actually get the extra servers, you can certainly use one to make your QA environment match product Ion, and the other would make a great build box.

You ' re negotiating more Often Than Think