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Admin
Wow. Job security at it's most retarded
Admin
making a Document Management System from zero is moronic.. there are hundreds if not thousands of systems that can help with this chore....
Admin
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.
Admin
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).
Admin
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.
Nice. Loved that movie, BTW.
Admin
I just keep my documents on my own computer.
Admin
Admin
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?
Admin
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.
Admin
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!
Admin
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!
Admin
I'd love to have a whole entire wall of filing cabnets like in the picture.
Admin
Everyone is obsessed with this bus thing. I'm rich. I go by car.
Admin
I'm pretty sure that's just a card catalog shot to look like a big wall of filing cabinets.
Admin
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)
Admin
the ultimate in 'desire for accessibility'->inaccessibility!
;)
Admin
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. :)
Admin
Admin
Why do women complicate everything?
Admin
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."
Admin
Damn! Where is it you work? I'm thinking about working somewhere I can retrieve WTF's all day long
Admin
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.
Admin
Sounds like the Computer Science lab I would occasionally visit in college.
Admin
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]
Admin
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.
Admin
Admin
Fire her and install Sharepoint. It's probably cheaper in the long run compared to her salary and benefits each year.
Admin
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.
Admin
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.
Admin
Its actually very clever. She engineered her own job security.
Admin
Admin
Sorry I wasn't clear- it is a college class. And now I should get back to work...
Admin
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. :)
Admin
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?
Admin
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.
Admin
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!
Admin
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!
Admin
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).
Admin
Admin
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
Admin
I knew Alessa, knew her very well indeed I did. Warm and soft she was. Bouncy too. Shame what happened really. Yes it was.
Admin
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%?
Admin
I assume you have never slept with sharepoint!
Admin
You're going back to college to become a secretary just so you can meet women?
Admin
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.
Admin
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.
Admin
Whatever. As long as you don't take a dump on my table...
Admin
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
Admin
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 so much need a management system for those, do you?
Admin
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 ;)