178 • Program Management in Defense and High Tech Environments
if a faulty unit has been provided, what is “fair” takes a back seat to what
the contract says. Your customer may want to send their own engineers
down to help resolve the interface—and that may be a great strategy for
you both. It is human nature to assume the other party is at fault, but if
you get your engineers and your customer’s engineers working together to
solve the problem, the solution is likely to be quicker, and the possibility of
disagreement as to the cause of the problem is likely to be less.
Let us carry this example to the next step—suppose the customer does
authorize troubleshooting and even sends in two of their own engineers to
work on the problem with you. ...