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Stake holders wanted some new code written and want to know how much it will cost.
I asked them if they want to include planning and design in the "cost" of the project.
They say they need to know how much development will cost.
I tell them that I need a set of requirements in order to estimate how long it will take, but that I don't do the cost thing.
They don't want to establish a set of requirements until they know how much it's going to cost them.
We've gone back and forth on this a few times now.
Out of frustration, I want to say "a beeeelion dollars", but I'm truly concerned that they'll cancel the project due to the exorbitant cost.
I'm afraid their pointy little heads will explode once we get into the time vs feature list trade-off phase of the design process.
This is the world of DoD project management.
I'm about to get all outlaw programmer on their collective asses.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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I don't care about stake holders. It's the steak holders you need to suck up to... 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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Steak will kill you dead, with cancer. So, I have been told. 
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Yeah, well death needs a reason. Steaks or something else. I think I'll enjoy my steaks while I can. Anyway, who wants to live forever?
Speaking of what's bad for you, we're BOTH in the risk zone[^]! (Link SFW)
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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..explain in simpeler terms.
You cannot tell how much the ice-cream will cost until they know whether or not there should be disco-sprinkles on top.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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What about strawberry sauce?
Or if they later demand it to be bacon flavored?
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Member 11683251 wrote: Or if they later demand it to be bacon flavored?
The strawberry sauce? 
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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You need to go agile, I hear it solves everything 
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U.S. Government does not like Agile, and they mostly avoid it.
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Except here, where they're trying to require it.
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Tell them to use Excel then. You can do anything in Excel.  
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I had a good laugh reading that! ^_^
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They probably want a fully functional "prototype" as well before signing the deal... 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I tell them that I need a set of requirements in order to estimate how long it will take, but that I don't do the cost thing.
They don't want to establish a set of requirements until they know how much it's going to cost them.
Reminds me of the time I wanted to borrow my mates book of Catch 22, but he wouldn't lend it to me until I lent him the film.
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"...I'm about to get all outlaw programmer on their collective asses.."
go on... I dare you 
Who is there to pick up the pieces?
Who the f*** is General Failure, and why is he reading my harddisk?
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You: How much does a thing cost?
Customer: What kind of thing?
You: Exactly
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I had a similar conversation once where I did eventually have to fall back on:
"You're looking at this like buying a car or a shirt. That's not quite how this works, you'd be better off looking at it like buying a concept car where you've come up with the concept: no one can know what you want out of it without details and without details you can't make an estimate of costs. I can go buck wild and give you a hover car for example where what you actually wanted was a transforming submersible one."
Apparently this sank in and we finally got the details.
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You could do a slight trick on them; You make up the specifications, and given those ones, you estimated that is should cost about x amount of money. But make sure to be clear that changing the spec could massively alter the cost, so if the project spends more than estimated you could just tell them why its their own fault for not reading the spec properly.
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Nothing you said is funny, because that is how it's actually done.
Especially if it's a government contract.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: They don't want to establish a set of requirements until they know how much it's going to cost them.
Total and complete insanity.
Idiot: Can you give us an cost estimate on doing something?
Developer: $4.2 billion
Idiot: That sounds high.
Developer: Well, I could shave some of the work off. Let's say $3.5 billion.
Idiot: Wow, that's a huge cost savings. Thanks. You've won the contract.
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Sounds horribly familiar. I worked as a defense contractor through most of the 80's, when men were men, women were women, and contractors were like high-priced 'professional ladies' outside the harbor on payday.
My dissatisfaction with it was on the other end. Every time I finished a project it went down a black hole. We'd put 10-15 man-years of work into a project, it would be run for a couple of weeks and then put on a shelf. We met the terms of the contract and the customer was satisfied, but it was still disappointing.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I worked for almost a year on a project (on a different contract), and I was about 98% done with it when they had a change of command, and the new guys's priorities and agenda were different from his predecessor. Bye-bye project.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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DoD[SOP]
Software Zen: delete this;
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One of the saddest sights I remember was when a project was canned shortly after deployment to production. When one of the developers expressed his disgust at the waste of a year of his work the manager said "Well you got paid didn't you". The developer decked him, the sad part, the developer was sacked.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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