During our design meetings with customers implementing netFORUM software, we train our analysts to ask this question all the time. I myself have been drawn into deep discussions about a very arcane and convoluted “requirement”. At some point, I have the sense to ask, “What kind of volume are we talking about here?” If it happens a few times a day, then maybe we continue the conversation. But if they say, “Remember that time last year?” then we put it in parking lot.

Over time, I’ve found more and more that people are not strident about coding to the exceptions. ROI is on everyone’s mind and they’re not going to want to spend $5,000 to customize and complicate a process that costs them 10 hours of labor per year to manage.

I will often get out the calculator and try to compute a rough cost of what it takes to deal with the exception (quantity of occurrence * minute to process each exception * $50/hour * 7 years of running the software). If the exceptions costs you $300,000 and a software mod will cost around $10,000 then do the mod. But if the mod will cost you $25,000 and your labor cost is $15,000 then don’t do it.