Comment On Invasion of the Consultants

I thought Marc said thre aren't any concerns, so I was mighty confused until the end of the article.

This would be funnier if it were not so grossly exaggerated; all the sci-fi references are just gilding a potential lily.

Commenting is futile!

The RWTF is what happened to the fith consultant?

massive IT efforts were required. The Consultants had constructed the project plan without ever discussing the matter with IT.

After reading this I had to check the author -- I was sure it was going to be snoofle.

I got first post today. I merely failed to document it.

So "Requirements are 100% complete" means, unexpectedly (?), that requirements gathering might be able to be considered complete, but the requirements analysis and publication (the hard part) are not even begun.

Oh, and black pudding is not "pudding" in the normal American sense of that word. It is a sort of blood sausage, and the word "thick" doesn't really seem appropriate, except perhaps as a measure of its diameter.

In Britain, of course, it is famous for being the weapon of choice of the practitioners of the martial art of Ecky Thump. And if you don't know what I am talking about, go look it up. Beware, because goggle will find pages containing 'icky' if you don't put "Ecky" in quotes.

Tester: "There's still that bug with [problem statement]!"
Me: "What is the issue number?"
Tester: "I haven't entered it in [bug tracking software] yet."
Me: "If it's not been recorded, then it doesn't exist."

We've successfully extended this attitude to requirements. Product quality has been pretty good.

Steve, you're overlooking the other factual error in that black pudding is delicious.

Outline resembles the inferior species known as Consultants. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

-----
Consultant Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Consultants.
Dalek Sec: This is not war. This is pest control!
Consultant Leader: We have five million Consultants. How many are you?
Dalek Sec: Four.
Consultant Leader: You would destroy the Consultants with four Daleks?
Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Consultants with one Dalek! You are superior in only one respect.
Consultant Leader: What is that?
Dalek Sec: You are better at dying.

Addendum (2013-02-19 08:37):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBSOhODoch0

Yesterday we went live with an extremely simple web site that took two years to build anyway. The first PM quit a year in when we were just short of launch, and all work done to date mysteriously disappeared. The site that is live now bears very little resemblance to the thing we tested for 8 weeks in QA. I cannot even imagine the depth of WTFFFFFFFFF that made that possible.

Yeah I gave them written requirements at the start (two years ago, remember). Those requirements have changed very little. But they ignored them and built what they wanted instead, which now, doesn't work.

Can I get some Consultants. Please??

Marc, those aren't the requirements you're looking for!

I almost used Yorkshire pudding instead, which is closer to a pudding and is also vile.

Sockatume:

Steve, you're overlooking the other factual error in that black pudding is delicious.

I wouldn't know - I've never actually tried it. Americans in general have some odd ideas about food, especially the less steak-like parts of pigs and cows. When I lived in the outskirts of Nashua (New Hampshire) in the late 80s, there was, across the road, a full-service butcher's shop. They were able to provide kidneys at a silly-small price because it was better to sell them to me at fifty cents a pound than to just throw them away because for some reason, most Americans won't eat kidneys, and some will look at you like you're stark staring mad if you say you like them.

And I'm happy, because I just got back from lunch where I had ... kidneys!

It's even worse- I believe it's illegal to sell the kidneys. I know it's illegal to sell the lung, which is why you can't make "real Haggis" in the US. It's hard to get offal in the US, which is sad, because I'd be up for trying some.

Remy Porter:

I almost used Yorkshire pudding instead, which is closer to a pudding and is also vile.

There's only one word for you here.

"Wrong".

Although I'm tempted to add a second word.

"Philistine" or maybe "Heathen".

And if your Yorkshire pudding is measurable with the word "thick" (other than a measure of dimensions) it hasn't been cooked enough to set properly.

Properly made and cooked YP will set, and be that correctly-cooked colour sometimes called "golden brown". It should have risen a bit around the edges, and for the best results, you pour the batter into the roasting tin, with the joint of beef on a rack above it. If you do this, the YP catches all the meat juices and tastes just heavenly. Making gravy from the juices is a bit of a problem afterwards if you do this, but you can't win them all.

ObiWayneKenobi:

You are better at dying.

I'm going to write that one down for my next collision with any consultant.
Although I actually work with many of them on a daily basis, and they're usually very helpful, I totally despise those who come with the "consultant" role written all over their suits.


Me: Here, this is the architecture of our BI system which has been working for five years providing reports and stuff without much maintenance effort
Big BI firm consultant: Wait, is this Java? And what is that Python thing?
Me: Yeah, that's why it works
Big BI firm consultant: yeah, we're going to set you up with "SuperMegaCorp BI Solution" because it's better.
Me: Consultants are the best! The best dying!

OTOH, TRWTF is that the forum and the articles use different formats for commenting (just had to remove a whole lot of HTML code from my comment, so yes, I'm pissed). So I got ask, Alex, when are you moving this to Discourse?

Remy Porter:

It's even worse- I believe it's illegal to sell the kidneys. I know it's illegal to sell the lung, which is why you can't make "real Haggis" in the US. It's hard to get offal in the US, which is sad, because I'd be up for trying some.

Hmm. When I lived there (over 20 years ago, how time flies when you're having fun), it wasn't illegal, or not in the states where I lived (NY, NH, MA), because you could sometimes (but not so often) get them in normal supermarkets. The main reason for their scarcity did seem to be related to a dislike of the idea of eating something that does what kidneys do.

Then again, that was before all the BSE stuff blew up in Britain. It later caused problems in the US - a colleague at the US branch of a company I worked for around 2000 was banned from giving blood in the US because he had spent too much time in the UK, eating potentially contaminated meat.

Remy Porter:

I almost used Yorkshire pudding instead, which is closer to a pudding and is also vile.

Remy 'conify' Porter wash your mouth out!

And then get yourself a flight over here, you clearly are in need of some cultural training.

Captcha - populus, Remy wasn't very populus with the Brits.

"The tension in the conference room was thicker than black pudding"

"Marc did not slam his face into the table until he lost consciousness"

Today I found 2.

paratus

OK

Not living with steak and kidney pie, Yorkshire pudding with gravy, or a couple of slices of black pudding with you breakfast fry-up would be a personal WTF.

My personal experience is that the consultants get paid a large amount of money to recommend that you spend more money on their own IT services whilst the internal IT may in return be given a few days and no information on the requirements to quote for work to be done within the company. Guess the consultants have a sales team and internal IT teams don't so you can never win.

And the Collective was defeated by good old-fashioned Vulcan logic. It's something I like about the Agile framework: if there is no deliverable demonstrating something, then that thing does not exist.

I'm sure that brains, because the BSE, are illegal to sell, so it's now impossible to eat deep fried brains, like these

http://ricette.donnamoderna.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/ricette-importate/secondo/carne/cervella-fritta-dorata/piatto-pronto-portauova-uova-cervello-tagliere-ciotola-ciotolina-legno-formaggio-cucchiaini-di-legno/39165231-1-ita-IT/piatto-pronto-portauova-uova-cervello-tagliere-ciotola-ciotolina-legno-formaggio-cucchiaini-di-legno_dettaglio_ricette_slider_grande3.jpg

Remy Porter:

I almost used Yorkshire pudding instead, which is closer to a pudding and is also vile.

You are horrifingly wrong. Yorkshire pudding is ambrosia.

Steve The Cynic:

Hmm. When I lived there (over 20 years ago, how time flies when you're having fun), it wasn't illegal, or not in the states where I lived (NY, NH, MA), because you could sometimes (but not so often) get them in normal supermarkets. The main reason for their scarcity did seem to be related to a dislike of the idea of eating something that does what kidneys do.

Then again, that was before all the BSE stuff blew up in Britain. It later caused problems in the US - a colleague at the US branch of a company I worked for around 2000 was banned from giving blood in the US because he had spent too much time in the UK, eating potentially contaminated meat.

That's a bit rich, considering how many haemophiliacs in UK got Hep C from contaminated blood products from US.

Aside: Captcha has been used before as autocomplete suggested it. Nice.

This is definitely WTF, but I'm not a fan of meeting room melodrama.

The Count:

The RWTF is what happened to the fith consultant?

He took the first phaser hit so the others could adapt.

article:

“Requirements are 100% complete!” Consultant Three-of-Four repeated. After an uncomfortable pause, he continued, “But they are not yet documented."

A good way to get rid of annoying forced-upon-you consultants in this case is to LET THEM DO IT! They claimed they can implement it in six weeks. Easy. Tell them they must provide you the written requirements right now and you will validate what they deliver in six weeks. If they can't provide the completed requirements, then they have zero credibility and a solid case for fraud and removal can be made.

justsomedudette:

Captcha - populus, Remy wasn't very populus with the Brits.

What, you're telling me there was only one of him?

Sadly, there isn't! Some guy wrote a book and used my name as his pen name, the jerk. It's some stupid zombie book, even.

Al:

My personal experience is that the consultants get paid a large amount of money to recommend that you spend more money on their own IT services whilst the internal IT may in return be given a few days and no information on the requirements to quote for work to be done within the company. Guess the consultants have a sales team and internal IT teams don't so you can never win.

I used to work at one company where the consultants left the computer services completely alone. This was back in the early 80s.

Up until sometime in the late 1970s, the company purchased time on a remote computer to do their accounting. At some point they hired a computer manager to come up with recommendations for and to install and manage a computer system. After looking around, he proposed buying a PDP-11/70.

The consultants (from one of the biggest accounting/consulting firms) had a fit. They wanted the company to buy an IBM mainframe since they could pick up lots of consulting revenue from that. They didn't see any future in the company getting a PDP-11/70. They finally convinced the Senior VP to fire the new computer manager using the logic that a PDP-11/70 was an engineering computer, not an accounting computer, and that it was therefore unable to handle the accounting. The Senior VP then called the computer manager into the meeting at end of which he would be fired. He had already hired a replacement.

Just that very morning, the latest Datamation had arrived. The lead story was something about one of the really big banks (Citibank, I think), buying a number of PDP-11/70s to handle much of their processing. When the consultants started talking again about how a PDP-11/70 was an engineering computer and not an accounting computer, the manager asked how long had Citibank been in the engineering business. When the Senior VP asked what he meant, he showed them the Datamation magazine. The Senior VP looked at it a minute, canceled the meeting, and then called up the replacement he had already hired and told him that the position was no longer available.

The accounting/consulting firm nearly got canned in the process. After that, the consultants were so traumatized by the events, they left the computer department completely alone.

Steve The Cynic:

Then again, that was before all the BSE stuff blew up in Britain. It later caused problems in the US - a colleague at the US branch of a company I worked for around 2000 was banned from giving blood in the US because he had spent too much time in the UK, eating potentially contaminated meat.

Happily they have since removed (most of) the restriction. Now it is limited to only 1980-1996.

From 1980 through 1996,
28. Did you spend time that adds up to three (3) months or more in the United Kingdom? (Review list of countries in the UK)

Holy cow, I just went through this last Friday.

Employer hired a goon from the cult of Scientology to coach the company. This guy is now overhauling all the IT systems with no input from anyone "because he's really smart".

I quit yesterday first thing in the morning.

Couldn't you have included everyone's favorite Borg? Voyager's 36 of D, of course.

First WTF: only five consultants in the meeting. Traditionally it must be nine.

TRWTF: No 7-of-9 in the story!

It's not really consultants that are the problem (since I am one lol).
The problem are the third party outsourcing companies that convince idiotic CIOs that they will save their company money.
These companies bring in a couple of experts (ie. yahoos) like the ones described in this article who then make unrealistic estimates that allow them to shove a foot in the door.
Next they bring in dozens of senior (ie. junior) level developers from a third world country to rack up as many hours as they possibly can and deliver ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of value.
I've seen this happen time and time again.
After 5 years of this, because the consultancy company is signed up for a contract with huge penalties if canceled, the CIO and his brain dead supporters are fired and the next guy comes in with a new plan to clean up the mess.
And round two of in-house development followed by round two of outsourcing.
It comes in 8-10 year cycles.

Ha. Once I had spent 4 hours in my boss's office when he was trying to convince me to sign requirements that were (to me) a pile of incoherent crap. Them being complete...

no laughing matter:

First WTF: only five consultants in the meeting. Traditionally it must be nine.

TRWTF: No 7-of-9 in the story!

MMmmmmmmmm, 7-of-9.

ubersoldat:

OTOH, TRWTF is that the forum and the articles use different formats for commenting (just had to remove a whole lot of HTML code from my comment, so yes, I'm pissed). So I got ask, Alex, when are you moving this to Discourse?

This site not only promises the daily WTF, it really delivers!

* A Captcha with about ten different words and which already has been hacked to show whatever someone likes.
* Two totally different forum systems.
* BB-Code which is not BB-Code: a simple [s]will not work[/s], because that would be too easy not a WTF. Instead it has to be "color=black;text-decoration:line-through".
* The most WTF of all, Akismet: It even forbids links to this very site, but is unable to detect the most generic of spam.

So it really is to annoy users on purpose!

Auction_God:

Steve The Cynic:

Then again, that was before all the BSE stuff blew up in Britain. It later caused problems in the US - a colleague at the US branch of a company I worked for around 2000 was banned from giving blood in the US because he had spent too much time in the UK, eating potentially contaminated meat.

Happily they have since removed (most of) the restriction. Now it is limited to only 1980-1996.

From 1980 through 1996,
28. Did you spend time that adds up to three (3) months or more in the United Kingdom? (Review list of countries in the UK)

It's the same in parts of Europe - I am not allowed to donate blood because I was in the UK from 09/1995 to 06/1996.

More like gelding a potential lily.

dpm:

This would be funnier if it were not so grossly exaggerated; all the sci-fi references are just gilding a potential lily.

More like gelding a potential lily.

Auction_God:

Steve The Cynic:

Then again, that was before all the BSE stuff blew up in Britain. It later caused problems in the US - a colleague at the US branch of a company I worked for around 2000 was banned from giving blood in the US because he had spent too much time in the UK, eating potentially contaminated meat.

Happily they have since removed (most of) the restriction. Now it is limited to only 1980-1996.

From 1980 through 1996,
28. Did you spend time that adds up to three (3) months or more in the United Kingdom? (Review list of countries in the UK)

Of course, that wouldn't help my former colleague, because that's the period when he was in the UK a lot.

Mike:

I'm sure that brains, because the BSE, are illegal to sell, so it's now impossible to eat deep fried brains, like these

http://ricette.donnamoderna.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/ricette-importate/secondo/carne/cervella-fritta-dorata/piatto-pronto-portauova-uova-cervello-tagliere-ciotola-ciotolina-legno-formaggio-cucchiaini-di-legno/39165231-1-ita-IT/piatto-pronto-portauova-uova-cervello-tagliere-ciotola-ciotolina-legno-formaggio-cucchiaini-di-legno_dettaglio_ricette_slider_grande3.jpg

That URL is a WTF by itself. Are they using the URL for keyword storage?

[zombie]BRAAAAAAAAINSSSSSSSSSSS!!![/zombie]

eric76:

The accounting/consulting firm nearly got canned in the process. After that, the consultants were so traumatized by the events, they left the computer department completely alone.

I love a happy ending.

Andrew:

We've successfully extended this attitude to requirements. Product quality has been pretty good.

In fact, product quality is so good, there's not been one bug or request for improvement filed in the last year!


Tester: "The bug reporting system is still down."
Me: "What is the issue number?"
Tester: "The reporting system is down - I can't enter it in [bug tracking software]!"
Me: "If it's not been recorded, then it doesn't exist!"

You don't need to see the documents we know what needs to be done so why don't you? Clearly internal IT is incompetent we can get it done in 6 weeks. All we need is 20 consultants at $200 per hour each.

Steve The Cynic:

Remy Porter:

It's even worse- I believe it's illegal to sell the kidneys. I know it's illegal to sell the lung, which is why you can't make "real Haggis" in the US. It's hard to get offal in the US, which is sad, because I'd be up for trying some.

Hmm. When I lived there (over 20 years ago, how time flies when you're having fun), it wasn't illegal, or not in the states where I lived (NY, NH, MA), because you could sometimes (but not so often) get them in normal supermarkets. The main reason for their scarcity did seem to be related to a dislike of the idea of eating something that does what kidneys do.

Then again, that was before all the BSE stuff blew up in Britain. It later caused problems in the US - a colleague at the US branch of a company I worked for around 2000 was banned from giving blood in the US because he had spent too much time in the UK, eating potentially contaminated meat.

It's legal to sell kidneys in the U.S. The reason you seldom see kidneys in supermarkets anymore is because beef no longer comes to the supermarket meat department in hindquarters--typically it now comes from the warehouse already in smaller cuts. Beef kidneys are encrusted with the light, dry fat known as suet.

The best way to cook kidneys is to boil the piss out of them.

lesle:

The best way to cook kidneys is to boil the piss out of them.

Figuratively or literally?

dpm:

This would be funnier if it were not so grossly exaggerated; all the sci-fi references are just gilding a potential lily.

I agree 100%