It's been a while since I had a baking analogy, so I'll try one to explain what I'm doing at my customer's. My customer has simple needs and is currently eating doughnuts. However, my customer's HQ is more ambitious and will like all the branches to share a cake and eat it. However, my customer cannot give up eating doughnut totally cos the slice of cake will not offer all the nutrients needed. So the customer will have to eat a bit of cake and a bit of doughnut, and in that sequence too. And if you think that's crazy, the cake hasn't been baked yet. Baking the cake will be hard work cos all the branches need to contribute the ingredients for their tiny slice, but make sure they don't override the overall taste of the cake. There are no bakers at my customer's. So where are the bakers and the oven? All located in another country.

So what do I do? I make sure that my customer comes up with their ingredient list; the bakers overseas bake our slice of the cake correctly, on time and within budget; the doughnut seller alters the doughnut contents so my customer can eat both cake and doughnut everyday without keeling over; and along the way generate all the paperwork to document from pre-bake to delivery.

Yes, all this and I don't even get to bake. Woohoo.