Good Advice Scorned

I thought it might be interesting to start a discussion about what is possibly the number one frustration of the performance architect:  What do you do when they won't listen to you?

I'm sure you've all faced this, you lay out the situation, you show them the numbers and your team still won't take the actions needed to avoid the forecasted problems.  Then what?

Well, you could put on your best Vincent Price voice and read them this poem:

Once, twice, three times warned,
And each time good advice you've scorned.
See the perf disaster loom,
Now you face your project's doom!

That's certainly a dramatic attention getter, but is it likely to help?  Err, probably not -- unless you're trying to get yourself a whole lot of time away from it all.

So what do you do?  Well, one reason I'm making this posting is I'd like to hear what sorts of things you do.  But let me tell you what I do:

1. My job is to help my team make better decisions, it doesn't end the moment they make one that I don't think is the best, if anything that makes my job all the more important going forward.
2. If we've decided to take a hard road then it's all the more important to understand what the likely outcomes are going to be and start planning for them. For instance:
   • Can we clearly articulate the costs we've decided to pay (performance or otherwise) so we all know what they're going to be.
   • Can we make afforances for the costs so that those costs are easier to bear?
   • Can we mitigate the costs at all?  
   • Can we prioritize the problems/costs we're likely to face so that we can address the ones that matter the most if not all of them?
3. Your team may have settled on a plan other than the one you endorse but perhaps you can find other ways to gain some of the benefits of your original plan.

The long and the short of it is that we all sink together.  Some of the choices won't go the way I would like -- that's both expected and healthy -- that just makes the adventure more fun.