I agree with you 100%, Mr. Steadman! I had a similar situation one time and it came on more insidiously where suddenly I was being swamped with bureaucracy and communiques.


>>Has this ever happened to you? I'm in the process of clarifying specs, by email, with a government client. I sent a list of questions, requesting they address them. I received my answers, only to find that they CC'ed a dozen or so end-users of the application I am to be upgrading, and included my list of questions.
>>
>>Now, I'm beginning to receive messages from the end-users, providing me with their personalized wish-list, all because my client was gracious enough to provide their end-users with my email address!
>>
>
>You need to let your client know that the time spent responding to the people that they cc'd is just as billable as the time spent evaluating their direct responses - if they say ignore outside input, do so, otherwise track and bill your time and provide your client with a detailed breakdown of your efforts. After all, they could have circulated the memo without you in the loop and just passed things along.
>
>>So, I sent a somewhat not-too-delicate request to my client, asking them to support my desire in keeping the lines of communication to a more official level.
>>
>
>Did you ream them, or simply remind them that you're billing for your efforts on their behalf based on their decision to add the end-users to the specification process.
>
>Get Whil Hentzen's Developer's Guide...