[constantine42]

The problem with any outsourced companies is they live and die by acceptance criteria. Many times it takes longer to write out all of the criteria to the level of detail that I need than to just do it myself because natural language is horrible for such technical details and trying to explain to someone "What" and "why" is too time consuming.

It really bothers me because I generally get put on projects with little acceptance criteria and not something I've done before, yet I deliver on time and the end user is very happy because I take the time to ask good questions up-front. Why can't someone deliver something that makes me that happy.

On the topic of communications. I've consulted on projects where I've said that something I noticed should be done a specific way, even though it was not part of AC, technically worked correctly, and making the change would be feature creep. My advice was ignored. Weeks later the end users kept complaining that the software was difficult to use and could not communicate what they didn't like. Since they refused to use the software and they refused to accept it as it was, I was brought back in. I sat down, found out what work the end user was doing, and did some of that work. I literally did someone else's job. I used the software. I made a huge list of areas for improvement. The PM agreed to everything. All of the changes were made, the end users were now saying it was awesome to use.

To summarize, learn to read between the lines of the acceptance criteria. Would you want to use the software you're making? For me, small issues annoy the heck out of me. I notice these things. End users tend to just say nebulous things like "it doesn't work well".