Wow, that was fun reading opinions that differ from mine from most of the Fox community.

The point I got from most of you is that a quality product takes into account the people that are going to use it. I agree with this. However, the point I was trying to make (and I missed it by the length of a Candian Football field) was that my client (who is also an end-user) is the person I ultimately have to satisfy.

There are times when a contract officer is your point of contact and these are usually the projects that are going to fail. You have no one on the inside that can help you with the system. The contract guy/girl is probably a bean counter as most likely won;t touch your system other than to say "why did it cost so much".

Whil Hentzen speaks of a "business champion" in his books. This is a person who has some power, will use the system and can help in explaining how things are done. This is the person that I try to get as my point of contact. This is the person I ultimately have to satisfy. They have the power of accepting or rejecting the product and they control the pusre strings. They need to be consulted on all things that will change the system (unless you can carte blanche from them to do it as you see fit). Even though they may be one of many that will use the system, they are the Alpha-Omega for that project.

Now I do remind them to consider the end-user but if they say something that sounds totally reasonable to me, they know the system, so I accept it, even if what they just said is totally unreasonable to the others that will eventually use the system. It is my opinion that you have to do this. If you don't satisfy the person with the money, you won't see any of it.