• MrGenericComment (unregistered)

    Imagine the complaints when it's delivered:

    "But it doesn't do..."

    "Was it in the Spec?"

    "No... but we made it vague enough such that we could ask for anything at any point."

    "You also made it vague enough such that I coud do anything I wanted at any point. 1 Million Pound please. Bye!"

  • Steve O. (unregistered)

    I worked on a project where the Business Analyst told me there would be no requirements. He then went on to tell me how sweet the project would be because I got to build the application the way I wanted to. Of course, I had no idea what the users wanted...so we named this development model Free Range Programming.

  • Mike R. (unregistered)

    >But it doesn't do..."
    >
    >"Was it in the Spec?"
    >
    >"No... but we made it vague enough such that
    >we could ask for anything at any point."
    >
    >"You also made it vague enough such that I
    >coud do anything I wanted at any point. 1
    >Million Pound please. Bye!"

    This seems like a Dilbert comic strip waiting to happen ;)

  • w00t (unregistered)

    Thanks for enlightening all of us bitches.

  • Mika H. (unregistered)
  • Adelle Hartley (unregistered)

    > I'll be in daily at a “pretty decent“ time, ensure that all of my work is delivered “soon enough,” and promise to put in “a good number” of hours each week!

    That was pretty much how it worked at the first IT company that I ever worked for. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the rest of the world doesn't work that way !!

    Seriously, I don't see what's wrong with that spec. Surely if you need to count the number of microseconds that it takes to return search results, then it is taking too long.

    And if turning up for work at a pretty decent time every day and writing software that works well enough and comes in under budget isn't good enough, then I don't know what is.

  • JB (unregistered)

    I always get spec which say "it must work as fast as possible" -- So I guess we'll all be working long hours researching algorithms and hand crafting assembly language then... When in fact any old implementation is going to be fast enough to keep them happy.

    They really mean to say that it should take less that 3 seconds to perform it's task. I wish they'd understand the difference between a requirement "It must be as fast as possible" and "A response time of under 3 seconds is required"... One means we can finish the thing in a couple of days. The other means weeks of work and probably compremising on other requirements.

  • Ray S (unregistered)

    In fact, "as fast as possible" should technically put the project on permanant hold. I mean, there's alway a new compiler, CPU, programming framework around the corner that will do better.

    "No, we can't ship to you this month. Yes yes, it's 'finished' and it works, but GCC x.y.z is released next month and it'll be 0.01% faster! If we ship now, we fail on the spec!"

  • NielsW (unregistered)

    We are really wining bitches.
    Love it.. :)

  • JohnnieC (unregistered)

    Of course, the reality of this one is that they are simply going through the motions to fill in the required documentation. This search function is easy enough, and the proven track record of the assigned programmer means that they are comfortable that the programmer will do acceptable work on this task. If the programmer were in his 'larval stage', it would be necessary to be much less vague.

  • duff (unregistered)

    Hey Steve O -

    Did you get to charge extra for "Free Range Programming"? My girlfriend likes to by Free Range, Cage & Cruelty Free Organic Eggs for like $5/dozen.

  • Allen Anderson (unregistered)

    The spec for the game track and field on the ninetendo game boy was written on a cocktail napkin. It contained a list of the events they wanted in the game. And that was it~

  • Warp (unregistered)

    I honestly think this example does not deserve this much bashing.

    This spec is basically saying "it has to be fast; just use your knowledge and common sense to deduce how fast it should be". That is, the coder should take into account the possible amount of data which will be used in practice and the situations where this function will be used and choose a data container which has an acceptable speed/writing work ratio.

    That is, the spec could be written in other words as "make it fast, but there's no need to overdo it".

    It's true that the spec might rely too much on the experience and common sense of the programmer, but I don't think that's such a horrible thing. It shows some degree of trust, which is something positive.

  • Nikolay Simeonov (unregistered)

    <quote>I honestly think this example does not deserve this much bashing.</quote>

    You're not right. It should put a boundary what's a meaningful time to wait. In an accounting program they had a report working for 3 hours (no it wasn't so big, the program was written poorly). On the other case in a program I wrote the customer didn't want to wait more than 20 seconds and on his side he upgraded the server and all computers.

    Honestly if I get "Search results are returned quickly" I don't know what I will do... kill the analyst most probably :)

  • Warp (unregistered)

    If the spec says "the result must be returned in 20 seconds" what will you do? Put a timer in the program which, after the 20 seconds expires and no result was still found, pops up a dialog which says "sorry, you need a faster computer"?

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Warp
    Warp:
    If the spec says "the result must be returned in 20 seconds" what will you do? Put a timer in the program which, after the 20 seconds expires and no result was still found, pops up a dialog which says "sorry, you need a faster computer"?

    Discover why the result is taking longer than 20 seconds. Better DB indexes? Caching solution? Calculating minimum computer requirements? "Return within 20s" is the desired result. Achieving the result gets to be your job.

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