• (cs) in reply to Jaime
    Jaime:
    Robajob:
    WTF is a "presentment"?
    Sounds to me like a "WiPro-ism". The one that constantly drives me nuts is "upgradation". I think they teach it in school, because they all know it.

    "upgradation" is what is done to counteract degradation.

    Server response degradation is due to the fact that we are attempting to run our database on an embedded system without a real file system. In order to fix this, we will require a hardware upgradation to our something something. Naturally, the cost of this hardware upgradation is $250/hr.

  • duis (unregistered) in reply to Been there, done that, got the scars
    Been there:
    Spivonious:
    ZachorJeff:
    I estimate that poor Zach's name changed to Jeff at some point.

    No, the email went to his boss, who I'm assuming is named Jeff.

    WTF? The contractor's liason in the company was the Director?!?!

    Sorry, this WTF lost all credibility at that point. In The Real WTF World, Zach would have been named "Internal Project Lead", designated as sole point of contact for the contract dev team (and therefore answering the phone at 2 PM Indian Subcontinent time), and made completely responsible for both the continuous debacle and the ultimate utter failure of the project.

    Read it again. It is not THE director of the company, it is Zach's director, who was over Zach's team. The server team, database group, and the web design team presumably had their own directors as well.

  • oppeto (unregistered)

    The project triangle states, "Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick any two."

    Zach's estimate was for Good and Cheap, but the management obviously wanted Fast and Fast instead.

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to avflinsch
    avflinsch:

    "upgradation" is what is done to counteract degradation.

    By the same morphological process, the opposite of "increment" would be "excrement".

    Captcha: usitas - The degree to which something is useful. (see "gravitas")

  • Bobby S (unregistered) in reply to Ziplodocus

    Obviously, the answers are:

    1. The Database
    2. Queried
    3. Button
  • Ziplodocus (unregistered) in reply to wtf

    [quote user="avflinsch"] By the same morphological process, the opposite of "increment" would be "excrement". quote]

    I just hope I never have to watch you increase the size of something excrementally.

  • Mr. Bob (unregistered)

    This story is missing "something"

  • OldCoder (unregistered) in reply to facilisis
    facilisis:
    Justin:
    Where is the WTF exactly?

    Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.

    That must be it... right?

    For $250 an hour, the vendor should tell me what my requirements are.

    I see your organisation runs SAP...

  • Krenn (unregistered) in reply to Justin
    Justin:
    Where is the WTF exactly?

    Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.

    That must be it... right?

    <joker>Not sure if serious...</joker>

    If you are serious, the WTF is that the vendor clearly has no idea how long it'll actually take to implement this, because they don't know what it needs to do or how it will do it.

    This means that the vendors quote that could do it in a fraction of the time was complete and utter bull, and Our Hero's diligence and accurate planning was ignored as a result.

  • Shea (unregistered)

    Step 2: ????? Step 3: Profit.

  • Justin (unregistered) in reply to Krenn
    Krenn:
    Justin:
    Where is the WTF exactly?

    Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.

    That must be it... right?

    <joker>Not sure if serious...</joker>

    If you are serious, the WTF is that the vendor clearly has no idea how long it'll actually take to implement this, because they don't know what it needs to do or how it will do it.

    This means that the vendors quote that could do it in a fraction of the time was complete and utter bull, and Our Hero's diligence and accurate planning was ignored as a result.

    As long as the 3 somethings are not in fact:

    • The xml based enterprise management system
    • Solve the question of the life the universe and evertyhing
    • An embedded version of Duke Nukem Forever

    I'm pretty sure that someone can come up with a decent idea of how much it will cost just from that email (this is after all only 1 form in a supposedly big project)

    Blatantly the answers are something along the lines of:

    • Some database
    • Look up available invoices
    • An icon / button

    The details might be a little sketchy, but ultimately there are not going to be any real surprises there - it should be possible to have a rough idea of what's involved without needing to know the exact SQL / the background colour of the icon.

  • BlueBearr (unregistered) in reply to Justin
    Justin:
    Where is the WTF exactly?

    Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.

    That must be it... right?

    The WTF is that, apparently, this large project got approved with no internal IT resources being allocated as part of the project. Zach's response of providing an estimate is a great way of stating that the company, having passed by internal workers to give the business to this external company, can't expect the internal workers to now work on the project for "free".

    Of course, Zach gets paid for his time gathering info for the contractor, but in the meantime his "real work" gets bumped, meaning either he has to work longer (unpaid overtime?) to reach deadlines or other people in the company suffer because the work doesn't get done on time.

  • deception, without pee or any ions (unregistered) in reply to facilisis
    facilisis:
    Justin:
    Where is the WTF exactly?

    Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.

    That must be it... right?

    For $250 an hour, the vendor should tell me what my requirements are.

    They will. It's just it'll take some time. A year or two. Three at most. Well, make it four. Five, to be on the safe side. Ok, let's not mess about. Ten. Nice round number. Eleven.

  • Randy Snicker (unregistered) in reply to oppeto
    oppeto:
    The project triangle states, "Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick any two."

    Zach's estimate was for Good and Cheap, but the management obviously wanted Fast and Fast instead.

    I'd say more like Any and Pick.

  • Serge (unregistered)

    I don't get it.

  • (cs) in reply to Justin
    Justin:
    Where is the WTF exactly?

    Oh I see - the vendor is quite moronically actually asking the customer for their requirements, rather than making them up.

    That must be it... right?

    No. Horse goes in front of the carriage.

    The vendor had already presented an estimate of completion and cost. Ergo, the vendor already knew (or should have already known) the requirements (at least the functional ones at a high level from a business perspective.) If he didn't, then it is no longer an estimation, but a wild guess (the Cone of Uncertainty gods are unforgiving.)

    It is not a WTF to ask such high level business requirements when doing an analysis elicitation and requirement prior to building a proposal and estimation.

    However, it is a WTF to ask for such after the estimate has been presented and just prior to the presentment... specially in such a something-something manner (if the story is to be believed.)

    There is a time and place for requirement elicitation and high level business analysis.

    The time of presenting a formal proposal and cost/time estimation ain't it. That is a bad way to proceed with an engineering project of any type.

  • Lego (unregistered) in reply to Mr. Bob
    Mr. Bob:
    This story is missing "something"
    This is something:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVWRr0RcbUs

  • William (unregistered) in reply to Kensey
    Kensey:
    Robajob:
    WTF is a "presentment"?

    In finance, "presentment" is when something like a bill or a check is officially offered for approval, payment or redemption. In this case, presumable on 4/6 the contractor was going to give the company an official, 100% final, pay-this-up-front invoice.

    Does nouning weird verbs?

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymously Yours
    Anonymously Yours:
    I think the whole mess could have been avoided if Zach had cooked the virtual books a little. He could have probably gotten the cost of in-house down to $0/hr by pointing out the in-house team was going to get paid without regard to what project they were on.

    Great! I can lay off the entire in-house staff because according to you they aren't doing anything else. You have a bright future in middle management.

  • (cs)
    Krenn (unregistered):
    This means that the vendors quote that could do it in a fraction of the time was complete and utter bull
    As long as Zach's estimate was not zero, they are correct.
  • (cs) in reply to Zecc
    Zecc:
    Krenn (unregistered):
    This means that the vendors quote that could do it in a fraction of the time was complete and utter bull
    As long as Zach's estimate was not zero, they are correct.

    Yes. But it was probably improper.

  • (cs) in reply to Justin
    Justin:
    it should be possible to have a rough idea of what's involved without needing to know the exact SQL / the background colour of the icon.

    But in your typical outsourced development project, the outside people, and the management and marketing types in your company that are dealing with them, are going to spend all of their time obsessing about stuff like the colo[u]r of the icons, what font the text is in, how many pixels wide the pages are (it's out of the question to let them flexibly adapt to any window width), and whether the outside people can make a sufficiently snazzy PowerPoint presentation showing off the look of the site they haven't actually developed yet... actually getting the thing to work is a minor trifling implementation detail for the programming geeks to worry about.

  • Leonard (unregistered) in reply to dtobias
    dtobias:
    But in your typical outsourced development project, the outside people, and the management and marketing types in your company that are dealing with them, are going to spend all of their time obsessing about stuff like the colour of the icons, what font the text is in, how many pixels wide the pages are (it's out of the question to let them flexibly adapt to any window width), and whether the outside people can make a sufficiently snazzy PowerPoint presentation showing off the look of the site they haven't actually developed yet... actually getting the thing to *work* is a minor trifling implementation detail for the programming geeks to worry about.
    So true. I worked for a Fortune 500 company that spent months working with the advertising (i.e. not technical) firm negotiating what the "creative" should look like. Finally when all the suited men and high heeled ladies were satisfied that they had something they could brag about to their New York dinner companions, they sent the mockups to internal development. A day and a half later they wanted to know why we hadn't "put it up" yet. Like, you just shove it in the VCR and push "Play", right?
  • ideo (unregistered) in reply to Randy Snicker
    Randy Snicker:
    oppeto:
    The project triangle states, "Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick any two."

    Zach's estimate was for Good and Cheap, but the management obviously wanted Fast and Fast instead.

    I'd say more like Any and Pick.
    I'd say more like Amy and Prick.

  • Ditto (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    So is part 2 tomorrow or what? It was just starting to get good, what happened next?

    something ..

  • RandomUser423684 (unregistered)
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Would you, at a high level, know what those somethings are?

    Let's see. At a hight level:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, the server will check some data to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then the web page that was loading will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

  • ideo (unregistered) in reply to RandomUser423684
    RandomUser423684:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Would you, at a high level, know what those somethings are?

    Let's see. At a hight level:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, the server will check some data to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then the web page that was loading will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.
    Thank you Captain Obvious for spoiling the fun.

  • RandomUser423684 (unregistered) in reply to ideo
    ideo:
    Thank you Captain Obvious for spoiling the fun.
    Think nothing of it, little Sally Sadsack. Away!
  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered)

    I see that others have also noticed this is a variation on the underpants gnome meme.

    1. Something
    2. ????
    3. Profit!

    I think we're on step 2.

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to BlueBearr
    BlueBearr:
    ...Of course, Zach gets paid for his time gathering info for the contractor, but in the meantime his "real work" gets bumped, meaning either he has to work longer to reach deadlines or other people in the company suffer because the work doesn't get done on time.
    I hope you don't plan to ever become a manager because with that kind of vision and clarity you haven't a prayer.

    -Harrow.

  • (cs) in reply to Robajob
    Robajob:
    WTF is a "presentment"?

    A $250/hour presentation.

  • (cs) in reply to Ramses So let it be written so let it be done
    Ramses So let it be written so let it be done:
    Having been on both sides of the fence here is the mindsets.

    3rd Party: The customer never knows what they need and usually want something they don't need. We will build it the way they think they want it and then we can hit them with change orders when they realize what they want is not what they need but they will need something else to make the system work for them.

    In-House: We don't want know stinking 3rd party developers coming in here and building something for us. Pay me $250/hr and I can build exactly what we need. We know our systems way better then they ever will and they will only give us about a gnat's dick's worth of what we need.

    I got your something right here!!!!

    FTFY

  • ideo (unregistered) in reply to ideo
    ideo:
    RandomUser423684:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Would you, at a high level, know what those somethings are?

    Let's see. At a hight level:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, the server will check some data to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then the web page that was loading will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.
    Thank you Captain Obvious for spoiling the fun.
    Hey! u're not me!

    Dick!

  • Anonymously Yours (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Anonymously Yours:
    I think the whole mess could have been avoided if Zach had cooked the virtual books a little. He could have probably gotten the cost of in-house down to $0/hr by pointing out the in-house team was going to get paid without regard to what project they were on.

    Great! I can lay off the entire in-house staff because according to you they aren't doing anything else. You have a bright future in middle management.

    You appear to have missed "something."

  • RBoy (unregistered) in reply to Home
    Home:
    Marge:
    Homer:
    No TV and no beer make Homer something something...

    Go crazy?

    Don't mind if I do!!!

    Am I crazy, or am I the sanest one here?

  • (cs) in reply to oppeto

    I worked at a company (Compugraphic) that called their latest project FELEX, which stood for Faster, Easier, Less EXpensive. Of course, we all knew that it was actually a SHAME: Slower, Harder, More EXpensive.

  • (cs) in reply to Leonard

    Oh my god! I can't stand it when people use "creative" as a noun! Quick, find me a bridge. I need to jump!

  • (cs)
    I’m working on the functional requirements for the invoice presentment on 4/6 and here is what I’m thinking. The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Would you, at a high level, know what those somethings are?

    Translation follows (charitable):

    We are trying to finish our 4/6 Milestone. One item on our list is that the Billing tab will only display certain invoices, as determined by your company's business logic. My plan is to have "Some Business Unit" evaluate "Some Rule" and log the viewing for "Some Other Business Unit"
    The first sentence I am sure of. The second seems to be inferable with a high degree of accuracy. The third sentence is pure conjecture.

    I'm not sure how dumb the e-mail really was... certainly hammering down a requirement on a pending milestone makes sense. Not knowing what every milestone bulletpoint was before biding is going to happen to some degree.

    If the third something was "an icon", then, well, WTF?

  • Faistuss (unregistered) in reply to frits

    Actually I think "something" else is going to happen that will drive Zach to do "something" after bashing someone's head in with "something".

  • PinkyAndTheBrainFan187 (unregistered)

    Ok, I think I know why there is a trackback from Soccer Player Center. It's because their comments section is a complete WTF. I feel dumber for having gone there.

  • Ziplodocus (unregistered) in reply to RogerInHawaii
    RogerInHawaii:
    I worked at a company (Compugraphic) that called their latest project FELEX, which stood for Faster, Easier, Less EXpensive. Of course, we all knew that it was actually a SHAME: Slower, Harder, More EXpensive.

    Umm... Wouldn't that be SHAMEX?

  • Adam (unregistered) in reply to Ziplodocus
    Ziplodocus:
    RogerInHawaii:
    I worked at a company (Compugraphic) that called their latest project FELEX, which stood for Faster, Easier, Less EXpensive. Of course, we all knew that it was actually a SHAME: Slower, Harder, More EXpensive.

    Umm... Wouldn't that be SHAMEX?

    No, it would be SHMEX.

  • (cs) in reply to ideo
    ideo:
    ideo:
    RandomUser423684:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Would you, at a high level, know what those somethings are?

    Let's see. At a hight level:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, the server will check some data to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then the web page that was loading will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.
    Thank you Captain Obvious for spoiling the fun.
    Hey! u're not me!

    Dick!

    Either register your user name or stop whining

  • (cs) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    In a place I worked, we had an outside firm from the subcontinent that had some "interface with the client" incentive. Without fail, every developer would call us once with some question. Usually it was something stupid, like asking for confirmation that something written was actually correct (e.g. please confirm that line endings in Windows must be "\x0d\x0a"). Sometimes they just waited for me to say something, anything, and then hung up, no "thank you" or "good bye", I guess task accomplished!
    This is a classical example of cargo cult "something". The outside firm must have had complaints that their teams did not ask questions, and presumably a lot of problems would show up at the last minute -- essentially derailing the schedules. Of course we know how that goes.

    So the outside firm's management went on to directly address the problem. Client complains that we don't "interface" enough with them? Oh well, we'll just make it into policy and surely that will fix things. Right? Riiiight.

    I think that Feynman's explanation of this idea should be a prominent topic in business school curriculums. I'm sure hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted worldwide since the inception of IT -- precisely on management blindly copying/implementing ideas they have no clue about -- just because someone else does the same thing, it must be good. Or, as it was in this case, just because someone claims that there is a problem, we should do "whatever" it takes to solve it. Yeah, "whatever", "something", cargo cult. Same thing.

    The real issue when dealing with people from different cultures is just this: cultural differences. Those are misunderstood, and we end up with essentially racial profiling and widespread belief that "idiots" from the subcontinent are up to no good. I have had first hand experience with that in a CS class I took.

    Three people on that team -- me + 2 guys from the subcontinent. I signed up for the class 2 weeks into the class, soon after the first hw project was assigned. So I somewhat unilaterally decide that I'll do all the organizing/scaffolding -- the parts I presumed they could have some problem with, given my comparatively huge experience advantage. All they'd have to do is write perhaps 100 or so lines of code to do the meat of the assignment.

    So I set up a google code project for our team, start up writing up everything I do as to environment setup, why and what, TODO list, start filling in the code, etc. All this happens over the course of one week. I send them numerous emails, I add them to the google project as admins, ask them to check if they can check out the repository, I write up an SVN tutorial to make it easier for them. And all I ever got back was one email saying that they are currently busy with another assignment, but they will get back to me.

    So on the last day of class before the assignment was due, we meet and I tell the prof what's up. Then they finally admit that it'd be easier for them to do it all face-to-face, and that we should split up. So I ended up taking rest of the class being a one person team. I didn't really have time to meet with those guys face-to-face, I barely had enough time to attend that class twice a week (out of three).

    Now those guys are very intelligent, hard working dudes. Their real problem is that they were raised -- apparently -- in an environment where you just don't do things at a distance, and don't do things while communicating in semi-formal writing. So to them the expectation that it would all be done using email, wikis, and source code repositories was just as foreign as it would be for me to write everything down in Japanese starting tomorrow. Neither one of us has ever done anything like that before.

    I think that it'd help if people in charge of curriculums in Asia would understand where the real problem is, and address it by adding requisite classes to the curriculum. They should also enforce "arms-length" collaboration on class projects --- this is how the corporate world works, and they will be expected to be able to do that.

  • bjolling (unregistered) in reply to bjolling
    bjolling:
    ideo:
    ideo:
    RandomUser423684:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Would you, at a high level, know what those somethings are?

    Let's see. At a hight level:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, the server will check some data to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then the web page that was loading will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.
    Thank you Captain Obvious for spoiling the fun.
    Hey! u're not me!

    Dick!

    Either register your user name or stop whining

    And what would that fix, exactly?

  • (cs) in reply to RogerInHawaii
    RogerInHawaii:
    Oh my god! I can't stand it when people use "creative" as a noun! Quick, find me a bridge. I need to jump!
    I'm not keen on gerunds in general, making you just as culpable.
  • (cs) in reply to PinkyAndTheBrainFan187
    PinkyAndTheBrainFan187:
    Ok, I think I know why there is a trackback from <url snipped to satisfy Askimet>. It's because their comments section is a complete WTF. I feel dumber for having gone there.

    I found this comment especially amusing:

    "who cares. soccer is for wussies. it was invented by house wives to pass the time a while back"

  • (cs) in reply to bjolling
    bjolling (unregistered):
    bjolling:
    Either register your user name or stop whining
    And what would that fix, exactly?
    It allows us to see whether it's the original person or, like you, a fake.
  • Ziplodocus (unregistered) in reply to Adam
    Adam:
    Ziplodocus:
    RogerInHawaii:
    I worked at a company (Compugraphic) that called their latest project FELEX, which stood for Faster, Easier, Less EXpensive. Of course, we all knew that it was actually a SHAME: Slower, Harder, More EXpensive.

    Umm... Wouldn't that be SHAMEX?

    No, it would be SHMEX.

    Sorry, Yiddish was never one of my strong points.

  • This would make a good Perl golf question (unregistered) in reply to grizz
    grizz:
    The user will navigate to the Billing tab and as the page loads, “something” will “do something” to determine if the invoice is available for viewing. If it is available for viewing, then “something” will be available for the user to click on to display the invoice.

    Hell; that looks like the first cut at a "requirements doc" for 90% of the projects I work on.

    You have requirements documents where you work? Are you hiring?

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