• mwanaheri (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    While it may be technically feasible, using an Excel macro to update a DB should be considered malicious....

    unfortunately, that doesn't make it less common.

  • Nuelo (unregistered)

    So what gets Agile blamed for at the end?

  • LANMind (unregistered) in reply to Skilldrick
    Skilldrick:
    The Nerve:
    Here's the military equivalent of agile programming.

    Ok, boys: listen up. You're going to take Baghdad. There are some rumors that it's going to take 120 days and $45 Billion. You have two weeks and $50k. There will be no battle plan, because the plans always have to change once you get into a combat situation anyway. We will be putting the infantry, snipers, artillery, medics, and intelligence in the same transport so that communication will be quicker and easier.

    Yes, we've tried this about a dozen times before, but we feel that you'll be the ones who are successful! Oh, and if you can find your own weapons and ammunition, that would be great.

    Such bullsh*t. There are so many things wrong with this analogy I don't think I even need to list them - everybody will find something wrong with it.

    Seriously though, what makes you think that agile teams are expected to do work with 1/1,000,000 of the budget? Agile projects take as long as they take and cost as much as they cost - I think that's actually pretty much how the campaign in Iraq is going at the moment.

    That's his point, you tard.

  • Lefty Middlewright (unregistered)

    This could have been the opportunity to highlight the bastardization of agile practices, but given the anti-agile stance of the site I didn't really expect that. But it seems like a gratuitous slap when the real culprit is just run-of-the-mill dumbness.

  • Pecus (unregistered) in reply to Drew
    Drew:
    Could I please get today's WTF in flow chart form? I think it might be easier for those of us who are regularly subjected to WTF MS engineers.

    No thanks. I need it in an Excel spreadsheet.

  • ideo (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    iMalc:
    Zaratustra:
    My company uses the waterfall model, except it's not water falling, if you get my drift.
    If by that you mean that the water flows upwards, then yeah we have one of those in my country, where the water is always windblown upwards.

    I think the company I work for sometimes follows that model, the requirements often seem to come last!

    I don't think he's talking about water. ;)

    Shitterfall?
  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve
    The Nerve:
    somedude:
    When the words "agile development" are mentioned in a job interview, what they really mean is "code like hell" of course.

    You hit the nail on the head. Miss Management and her ilk could care less about what developers think is a sound approach. The design department here loves it too, because they use it as an excuse to make their requirements much less vague.

    Sounds like a sound approach to me!

    Maybe that is the reason why waterfall development fails so often: Users are giving only vague requirements in the beginning and reveal what really is wanted only when it's too late.

  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to caffeine
    caffeine:
    Thank goodness I wasn't alone in this thought... having production servers on 'auto-update' is... well... lazy at best, downright dangerous at worst.
    But where in the article do you read that their production code runs on production servers?

    This may also have run on the office installation of the manager's secretary!

    CAPTCHA: minim - agile writing applied to latin words!

  • Brian (unregistered) in reply to Arancaytar

    /* And people wonder why I react allergically to anything involving Visual Basic. It's because of Rube Goldberg machines built from MS Office macros. */

    So somebody uses a hammer to crack an egg, and you blame the hammer??

  • publiclurker (unregistered) in reply to Design Pattern

    Exactly. One of the nice things about agile is that shorter iterations quickly show the shortcoming in the users requirements while with waterfall type development, this truth doesn't come out until the end when it's too late to do much but slap together ha half-assed solution and hope it works.

  • tekHedd (unregistered) in reply to Nuelo
    So what gets Agile blamed for at the end?

    Sarcasm. Irony. It's a form of dark humor.

    I think it's strange that people who frequent WTF actually have to have sarcasm and irony explained to them. Even after reading the comments explaining that it's sarcasm and irony.

    But, I have to admit, it's ironically humrous.

  • jd (unregistered) in reply to Brian

    No, that's a bad analogy. It's more like people build toy houses with Legos when they are young. When they get older, instead of graduating to using pine, cement, and gypsum, they keep building (real) houses with Legos, and expect them to work as well as pine, cement, and gypsum. Some of them even go on to building convention centers and sky scrapers with Legos, things that Legos were never designed to handle the stress of. VB is OK for small projects and proof-of-concepts. The problems don't start showing up until you give it real-world data and are dependent upon it for your cash flow.

  • sdfasdf (unregistered)

    I work for one of the countries largest banks and this is all eirily familiar. Keep your money under your bed.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to tekHedd
    tekHedd:
    So what gets Agile blamed for at the end?

    Sarcasm. Irony. It's a form of dark humor.

    I think it's strange that people who frequent WTF actually have to have sarcasm and irony explained to them. Even after reading the comments explaining that it's sarcasm and irony.

    But, I have to admit, it's ironically humrous.

    You should learn the meaning of the word "irony" and the spelling of the word "humorous" because you're way out on both.

  • NorgTheFat (unregistered)

    Welcome to Macro hell kiddies!

  • Yardik (unregistered)

    I thought everyone knew.. You never go ATM.

  • TC (unregistered)

    When I first read about the definition and attributes of "Agile" development I realized I was doing this intuitively back in my VB/Access days. It worked for me because no time frames (i.e detailed project plans, milestones etc) were demanded. Instead I worked with the users doing constant releases until they gave me the thumbs up. It worked very well. Once the management control freaks got involved, project managers would demand detailed project plans and accurate estimates - and would demand them at 3pm that day. Even if you were able to give them an accurate estimate, requirements would change, dependencies would become critical, people would become lazy and apathetic and eventually the project would turn to shit. A Claytons PIR (Post Implementation Review) might identify the problems but the usual non-sequitor excuses were trotted out and then everyone just went to lunch. And yes "Agile Development" does translate to Management as delivering everything in 4 weeks instead of 8.

    • sigh *
  • wds (unregistered)

    TRWTF is people's reading comprehension. No wonder nobody gets their requirements right. Even if the clients would be able to specify them exactly as they want to, half of you wouldn't be able to understand them.

  • David (unregistered)

    You see, this is why people hate so-called "agile" duhvelopment - because its adherents always turn out either to have zero reading comprehension skills or to be caprivorous bridge-subdwellers.

  • (cs) in reply to Carlos M

    That's actually an automatic-update-of-production-software-without-testing WTF.

  • Jason Antman (unregistered)

    Wait.... this guy's shop is handling ATM Addressing for a production ISP and is using VB, SQL Server, Excel, or anything else by Microsoft????

  • cheap nfl jerseys (unregistered)

    Once again great post. You seem to have a good understanding of these themes.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Carlos M
    Carlos M:
    Oh, the joys of Microsoft platforms, that change behaviour without you knowing when, how and why.

    And Admins that allow patches to be applied without being fully tested and understood.

    Today's WOTD is: SUS Server. Use it (properly).

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