Crazy Customer Expectations

I don’t know why, I should know better, but I am still constantly amazed by the lack of understanding of a customer and their expectations of effort to complete some tasks. I am working on a RFT at the moment for a Pilot Pocket PC application as follows.

The PDA application is to duplicate the functionality of their existing Smart Client (Windows Forms) application and refactor the UI design for the PDA consuming the existing Web Services using the wireless capability of their GPRS enabled Pocket PC phones. They would also like this application to be self deploying/updateable, provide a duplication of their reference data services, encrypt all locally persisted data, provide a means to reprocess updates where the updates fail, and finally integrate into their existing security services.

I have no problem with all of that, it is all technically feasible, and would be a lot of fun to develop. Then I turn to the page in the RFT with the section on timing and there lies the following innocent sentence, “A three week delivery timeframe will be imposed once the successful tender has been notified of their selection”.

Are you mad, are you crazy – three weeks! What planet are you from that you would expect that the above could be completed in this timeframe.? Surely you asked yourself, how long did it take to develop the application previously, including the additional requirements – it would have been over a period of months, certainly not weeks.

Come on, give me a break. Is it April 1, because this is a complete and utter joke right?!?