Conflate means to merge or blow
together two bodies or readings. So a conflator is someone who puts together
separate pieces of information from different sources and creates an imaginary
entity that he believes in.
This occurs time and time again with
clients who have seen many product demonstrations from a number of suppliers and,
in their minds eye, they merge all the good things they saw and believe that
what they ultimately bought had all of these wonderful features. Ultimately
they discover the reality of what they did buy and it’s guaranteed instant
customer dissatisfaction, Also it’s an instant source of modification requests.
Imagine you see the images of five famous movie stars, build an ideal composite
image and then get to meet just one of them. Now you get the feeling that the
conflator has.
In some cases, particularly in
software purchases, it not completely the conflator’s fault . Software salesmen do
mention possible future enhancements as if they are already in the code.
They’re not lying, they’re salesmen.
Managing this type can only be done
at the kick off meeting for the project. You must have all the key stakeholders
in the meeting and you must ensure that they are made aware of what it is you
are planning to deliver. Talk with all of them to check their
understanding of what they think they’re getting. Nine times out of ten you’ll
find someone who’s really enthusiastic about a particular function or feature
that you find out is not available. That’s the time to speak up and fix the
misunderstanding. Ignoring it hoping that it will go away is not prudent long
term.
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