Rick Strahl blogs Nothing is Trivial:
I got a call from a customer last week who needed a small piece of work done that he defined as Trivial. Ok, trivial can be good – quickie in and out and youre done, but usually when I hear the word trivial I always cringe because it rarely is.
“How hard can it be?” or “we’ve got a straight-forward issue to resolve here” are also indications that the client with doesn’t understand the complexity of the problem, is trying to minimize his cost or is trying to avoid admitting they have no idea how to solve the problem. By the time most companies get around to calling in a consultant, they have probably tried every other alternative. I recall speaking with a fellow consultant about an assignment where he was just amazed at the complexity of the problem, the procedural mess the client had gotten themselves into, the political morass of any solution, the band-aids, baling wire and duct tape holding together the current solution. Why else would they be willing to pay his rates? If it was easy, they would have fixed it themselves.