Section 16.3. Questions to Ask

16.3. Questions to Ask

Whatever the category, when you're involved in selecting complex, expensive software, there are a number of important questions to ask.

You'll need to determine whether it's best to build it yourself, buy a product, or contract with an ASP (application service provider). You'll want to know about the total cost of ownership, from purchase to integration to customization to maintenance to upgrade. You'll want to know about the long-term outlook for the vendor; in other words, will she be there to answer the phone in six months?

Most importantly, you need to find an engineer in the vendor's firm who will answer these questions. One of the many truisms from the world of Dilbert is that engineers are like Vulcans; they cannot tell a lie. They will happily contradict their company's marketing hypeusually without even the slightest provocationand tell you:

• What their product does well

• What their product does poorly

• What they wish their product could do

So, even though engineers are the ones who are actually working hard to automate us out of a job, we should still like them because they're helpful and honest. And they will only need us more in the coming yearsto make productive use of the fascinating new tools they are building.