Setting Expectations

I was talking with my young niece a few days ago about getting shots. She told me she really hated them. I then told her a story about my brother who had always had a deathly fear of shots. At one point he and I were talking about this (as children), and it came up that he had always thought that when the doctor pushed the plunger in, it was making the needle go further into his arm. He said he was really frightened that it would go into his bone.

At that point my niece's eyes got big and she said, "You mean, it doesn't push the needle further in?"

I was intrigued that she had the same mis-information as my brother. It made me think of how hard I work to give correct information in order to set expectations. I feel that one characteristic of good engineering is to set expectations correctly. This may sometimes go against the wishes and hopes of the marketing and sales folks, but it has to be done. I do, however, feel that (in the long run) setting expectations correctly works for both me as a producer of software and my customers as consumers of software. By "customer" here I mean both internal (e.g., within the company) and external (e.g., paying) customers.

If I set expectations too high and don't meet them, my credibility is damaged, and people have a long memory for failure.