Comment On The Document Management Ambassador

Wow. Job security at it's most retarded

making a Document Management System from zero is moronic.. there are hundreds if not thousands of systems that can help with this chore....

Conveniently, the lookup table that maps document types to enum/date-things is stored entirely in Alessa's mind.

Unintentional parallels to Silent Hill? Something so twisted and evil as this indexed system could only exist the same mind that dreamed up unfathomable worlds of torture and pain.

A girl who answers phones got promoted to Document Management Manager after sleeping with the CIO for a while. She was responsible for writing requirements and specs for an in-house system, which were really not good with a system that was partially in her head. Guess how that system looked at first cut. Then she was responsible for critiquing the system, and found all kinds of problems based on the "requirements" that she came up with (or didn't come up with) in the first place. But it was definitely IT's fault, and the CIO was all to happy to look for heads to cut off (though not his girlfriends).

Good Lord! The amount of money spent on man-hours wrangling with that nightmare could be better invested in an existing DMS. There are fairly low cost options out there that provide real DMS features - such as the ability to retrieve a document quickly without having to ask an intermediary to do it.

Saladin:

Unintentional parallels to Silent Hill? Something so twisted and evil as this indexed system could only exist the same mind that dreamed up unfathomable worlds of torture and pain.

Nice. Loved that movie, BTW.

I just keep my documents on my own computer.

AbbydonKrafts:

Nice. Loved that movie, BTW.

I was thinking more of the games, but the movie is based on similar themes so close enough :3

Great job security.

Now, if Alessa ever gets fired...
Oh, wait. The document for firing someone is...? Alessa? What is the document for terminating an employee?
You'll get back to me when? When what freezes over?

Sadly enough, situations like this are very common in Japan. There is no lexical ordering over the character set so one can't really put things in "alphabetical" order. Instead, someone - usually someone who has worked there forever - owns the filing system and is the only one who can find anything. Offices have shut down when that person leaves.

Not that you should have to (or want to), but since the submitter seems to need to...

Here's how to debug Alessa's brain:

1. Temporarily tell everyone to stop submitting documents (may not be necessary depending on office size and frequency of submissions)
2. Create a hello-world Word document
3. Take a dump of the index table
4. Have Alessa insert the Word document
5. Take another dump of the index table
6. do a diff - one entry will be for the file, the other for its type
6. repeat for spreadsheet, powerpoint, visio, ...

Voila! You have reverse engineered (at least part of) the female mind!

Saladin:

Conveniently, the lookup table that maps document types to enum/date-things is stored entirely in Alessa's mind.

Unintentional parallels to Silent Hill? Something so twisted and evil as this indexed system could only exist the same mind that dreamed up unfathomable worlds of torture and pain.

No, it was definitely intentional (have you ever known anyone named "Alessa?"). I thought it was subtle enough that no one would notice, though; nice job!

I'd love to have a whole entire wall of filing cabnets like in the picture.

Everyone is obsessed with this bus thing. I'm rich. I go by car.

I'm pretty sure that's just a card catalog shot to look like a big wall of filing cabinets.

snoofle:

Here's how to debug Alessa's brain:

...

Voila! You have reverse engineered (at least part of) the female mind!

Quite a concept there. What would really suck is if you turn around and submit another one and see that she puts it in a totally different place like she uses some arbitrary set of properties to determine location (filesize, importance, author, starting letter of the 3rd paragraph, etc)

the ultimate in 'desire for accessibility'->inaccessibility!

;)

snoofle:

Not that you should have to (or want to), but since the submitter seems to need to...

Here's how to debug Alessa's brain:

...

Voila! You have reverse engineered (at least part of) the female mind!

Getting a little ahead of yourself don't you think? You'll never reverse engineer that, at least not with a computer. Engineers and computers use logic and therefore are simply incapable. :)

ssprencel:

snoofle:

Not that you should have to (or want to), but since the submitter seems to need to...

Here's how to debug Alessa's brain:

...

Voila! You have reverse engineered (at least part of) the female mind!

Getting a little ahead of yourself don't you think? You'll never reverse engineer that, at least not with a computer. Engineers and computers use logic and therefore are simply incapable. :)

True - i did say part of it ;)

Why do women complicate everything?

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

The Fox:

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

Damn! Where is it you work? I'm thinking about working somewhere I can retrieve WTF's all day long

I've heard that SharePoint Services has a great DMS, and it's free with a valid license of Win2k3 server ...

I'm at a small company with half a dozen or so servers running Win2k3, so if we ever feel the need to have a DMS and I'm asked to write one, I'm just gonna install SharePoint and demand a raise for implementing it so quickly, hehe.

Sounds like the Computer Science lab I would occasionally visit in college.

Uberbandit:

The Fox:

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

Damn! Where is it you work? I'm thinking about working somewhere I can retrieve WTF's all day long

Sounds like the Computer Science lab I would occasionally visit in college.

[edit] one of these days I'll remember to hit the quote button instead of reply ... [/edit]

chris:

Everyone is obsessed with this bus thing. I'm rich. I go by car.

My manager told me to document a program that someone else had written. We were retiring the program and HIS manager wanted a record of what it did and how it worked. I told my manager that I knew all the basics about the program and it was a waste of time to document it since we would never use it.

"What if you get hit by a bus!?"
"Don't worry about that. I'm very nimble."

He created a PowerPoint with pros and cons, then gave a presentation to his manager. One of the Cons was "Lead developer understands program" and a bullet point of "Developer is very nimble".

Needless to say I documented it and we never used it. I dragged it out into a 6 week project to spite him though.

Sadly enough, situations like this are very common in Japan. There is no lexical ordering over the character set so one can't really put things in "alphabetical" order. Instead, someone - usually someone who has worked there forever - owns the filing system and is the only one who can find anything. Offices have shut down when that person leaves.

In that case, the best way would be to have a *topical* organizational scheme for the documents... something like the dewey decimal system.

Fire her and install Sharepoint. It's probably cheaper in the long run compared to her salary and benefits each year.

Charles M:

Sadly enough, situations like this are very common in Japan. There is no lexical ordering over the character set so one can't really put things in "alphabetical" order. Instead, someone - usually someone who has worked there forever - owns the filing system and is the only one who can find anything. Offices have shut down when that person leaves.

Utter rubbish. Dunno why this one keeps popping up, but Japanese does have a freaking "alphabetical" order and offices don't fall apart when workers leave or die.

The DDS is not a good example. It fails because the relative size of different topics for books changes so quickly over time. Ex. for Religion, 9 decades (200-290) deal with Christianity, and the last decade deals with all other religions.

DMSes shouldn't have to deal with that, as much.

Its actually very clever. She engineered her own job security.

The Fox:

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

Wait a minute - you have an actual woman in your office? Can I come work at your company?

Sorry I wasn't clear- it is a college class. And now I should get back to work...

The easy way out: install Windows Desktop Search, have it index the location of the cryptically named folders (over SMB if need be), and there you go. :)

My mother does filing like this - nothing is ever where you would expect; she puts stuff under what it relates to.

For example, my sister in law's name starts with "T", but is in my mothers phone book under "D" for daughter-in-law, and my kids names start with "M" and "S", but their cell phones are under "G" (for grandchild) in Grandma's phone book. My name starts with "S" (no, not snoofle), but am under K for "kid".

My wife saw this and thought it was a wonderful idea.

Are all women like this, and why? Why? WHY?

Ebs2002:

Wow. Job security at it's most retarded

Reminds me of a story I heard about a guy who worked in the warehouse doing inventory. He would hide certain products so no one could find them and inevitably when asked he could find it in 2 seconds. Took them a LONG time to figure out he wasnt really good at his job, he had just figured out how to ensure his job security for a while.

snoofle:

The Fox:

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

Wait a minute - you have an actual woman in your office? Can I come work at your company?

We have women in my office: they're called secretaries... unfortunately it makes it hard to talk to them about work! ;) Good thing I'm going back to college!

snoofle:

For example, my sister in law's name starts with "T", but is in my mothers phone book under "D" for daughter-in-law, and my kids names start with "M" and "S", but their cell phones are under "G" (for grandchild) in Grandma's phone book. My name starts with "S" (no, not snoofle), but am under K for "kid".

I think this is one of the funniest things I've ever heard! At least my mom's phone directory is alphabetized by last name!

The Fox:

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

Though the worst is when the female doesn't get it, but because of her gender she overpowers everyone else, making everything worse off than before.

I hope I never run into one of those.

When it comes to males "not getting it", that falls into probability of pure numbers (the more in the field, the bigger chance of finding people who shouldn't be there).

Edowyth:

snoofle:

For example, my sister in law's name starts with "T", but is in my mothers phone book under "D" for daughter-in-law, and my kids names start with "M" and "S", but their cell phones are under "G" (for grandchild) in Grandma's phone book. My name starts with "S" (no, not snoofle), but am under K for "kid".

I think this is one of the funniest things I've ever heard! At least my mom's phone directory is alphabetized by last name!

My wife is even worse - she files stuff under (K) for kid or (C) for child, then can't remember where she put it and asks me to find it for her. Grrr. I mean, I love her more than life itself, but Grrr!

So what's the problem? Ask Alessa to post a weekly cross-reference report in Excel format. If she complains, remind her that it should take no more than 5 minutes and nobody is _that_ busy.

Assume that the numerical document code is arbitrary (it should be); include any and all fields on which you might want to search (title, date, revision, process, etc.).

She is completely right to keep eager little peanut-butter fingers away from the database and source documents.

That said, All officially approved controlled docs should be posted in an open shared folder as pdf files so they are accessible to everybody who might need them. Otherwise you just have another "shelfware" system.

DocGoddess
ISO 9001 system developer & lead internal auditor
Senior Technical Writer, Manufacturing & Software
20+ years as doc control manager
Member, Society for Technical Communication
Member, American Society for Quality

I knew Alessa, knew her very well indeed I did.
Warm and soft she was. Bouncy too.
Shame what happened really. Yes it was.

I'm sure there are other perfectly good systems, but it seems just about every business on the planet could benefit from Sharepoint.

How many wtfs result from reinventing the wheel? 95%?

I assume you have never slept with sharepoint!

Edowyth:

snoofle:

Wait a minute - you have an actual woman in your office? Can I come work at your company?

We have women in my office: they're called secretaries... unfortunately it makes it hard to talk to them about work! ;) Good thing I'm going back to college!

You're going back to college to become a secretary just so you can meet women?

I used to keep my phone list in chronological order. Whenever I got a new person to put in it, I just stuck them on the end and put the date on the page in a little memo book. On the plus side, I remembered roughly when I added people (otherwise I don't relate to temporal entities). On the other plus side, nobody else could find anything in it.

snoofle:

My wife is even worse - she files stuff under (K) for kid or (C) for child, then can't remember where she put it and asks me to find it for her. Grrr. I mean, I love her more than life itself, but Grrr!

You have no idea how lucky you are. My wife eschews the concept of "file" altogether. There's a giant pile and the trash can.

snoofle:

3. Take a dump of the index table

Whatever. As long as you don't take a dump on my table...

snoofle:

The Fox:

I'm sitting here in a programming lab with 30 men and 1 woman. The girl is the only one muttering to herself- but most of the time I overhear what she says, it seems to be right on. She gets it. Not like the guy I overheard saying, "I don't like foreach and while loops, they're too complicated. I prefer if loops."

Wait a minute - you have an actual woman in your office? Can I come work at your company?

You should work with me. :) I am one of 4 developers in my department. We (the 2 women) write C# code and the two guys write C++. This is the first time I've worked with another female developer. It's a lot of fun!

Theresa

Here, we just use a Subversion repository for our documentation that both the programming and non-progamming staff need.

(I think the non-programming staff also have some Shared Folders(tm), but that's not a hell I have to deal with.)

This would, of course, break down a bit for an entire large company or with a lot of ephemeral or short-lived documents, but you don't <I>so much</i> need a management system for those, do you?

A perfect example of an HR Single Point Of Failure. (Not to mention how convoluted the system is). I love adding HR SPFs to Threat and Risk Assessments ;)