Incompatibility

In a meeting today, I learned that not only is cross-platform compatibility" impossible to get while sticking to the deadline, it's almost impossible to get by itself.

Cross-platform compability is about allowing two groups, call them A and B, to create the same kind of thing. We can't allow cross-platform compatibility with each using their own existing standards. A's are different, generally higher in terms of safety and quality, and certainly more expensive to meet, so A would be completely unable to compete with B.

We can't change A's standards to make cross-platform compatibility cheaper, either. Actually, I gather that we might in the near-to-medium future, but that's definitely way beyond the scope of TDP. That's another at-least-three-years project by itself, and it's the kind that's likely to take longer than average, and our bosses need to make a decision on this now.

We can't allow cross-platform compatibility by requiring Group B to meet A's standards, either. It would edge up against policies forbidding that kind of thing, if not completely break them. And it would be a massive PR nightmare, to put it in terms so vague they are almost but not quite meaningless. It might be legal, and I guess it might even be enforceable, but would really piss people off... in ways that are, again, outside the scope of TDP.

And the thing is, we can't ignore cross-platform compability or put it off until the comprehensive rulemaking either. Because we're told that at least some entities in both A and B would need it. What those entities need doesn't set our agenda (sort of. Generally. This is another thing I'll elaborate on later), but if they state a preference now, then given why we're doing this, we'd need a very good reason to do the opposite thing.

When I was told that cross-platform compatibility would add between two and 18 months to this, I thought that was mostly because of the analysis - doing it by fiat would be relatively simple, I thought, but figuring out all its effects and indirect effects and their indirect effects would take months. Now, though, I wouldn't be surprised if simply agreeing on how to do it took 18 months.