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Admin
Frist comment will ship November 28, 2019.
Admin
Last time we had a Herb featured on TDWTF, he was The Real WTF (https://thedailywtf.com/articles/But-I-Didnt-Change-a-Thing). Good to see things are still the same, since today's Herb set an arbitrary deadline and shipped trash.
Admin
Uh, no. Jack had set the arbitrary deadline, Herb was the one who correctly said that the project will not be finished by then
Admin
I lived this. Exactly this. I didn't make a T-Shirt, and I doubt anyone from that team remembers, but I clearly said the rewrite would be finished a year after the target date. There was a transition of some customers into the new system before that date, but it wrapped up then. I'm no Herb, but I'm decent at estimates.
Admin
A happy ending? What is this, LinkedIn?
Admin
This story is amusing because it could've ended twice before it actually did.
Admin
TRWTF is arbitrary dates. If your development/build/release process is such that it can't be done when the software is ready, but only at some arbitrary date, you're doing it wrong.
Admin
Working with developers to determine timelines makes sense (in a waterfall world). And scope should also have input from the development team, but shouldn't it be driven by user needs and market opportunity? Why build something nobody will buy?
Admin
T-shirts are so 1998. By 2002, the DotCom bubble has burst and the expected end of the world as we came into 2000 is long past. We're all doing Web 2.0.
Admin
@jkshapiro: So launching the project without consulting developers or customers was a double WTF.
Admin
Let's see. The correct incompetent gets canned and the replacement has good ideas. Too bad Jack's classmate got the marketing job, so did not listen to customer requests, but based decisions on what sells and let's make this better for the sales department. Too bad it did not make it better for the customers.
Admin
No - arbitrary dates for completion are the custom in most businesses because the person who usually makes these estimates has little to no concept of what is involved. If they do, and they ask the people who actually do the work, then it involves walking over to the team lead and asking them out of the blue how long something will take, without giving them time to think about it, much less do any kind of decent analysis, much less gather estimates from the rest of the team. This is my world, and I get this all the time - I got it just last week when my manager, out of the blue, asked me for an estimate, off the top of my head, for 4 major projects for all of 2019, at 6PM on a Friday.
Admin
https://mindfulbydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/56610968-e1525142663128.jpg
Admin
Not at all - this is customary.
A real WTF would be Emma not only working with the devs to get a good estimate, but would also push back against business demanding they do their job and provide a business case not only for benefitting the business, but also something that customers really want (usually based on customer feedback).
That so rarely happens that it would be TRWTF.
Admin
The amended T-shirt, as quoted in the article, says 20023.
That sounds like a reasonable and attainable deadline.
Admin
So, basically Emma kept a project going and shipped a garbage product just so she could glorify Herb's amazing predictive skills. The product would have been equally successful if they shipped it on Jack's original date.
Admin
Your fault for being there at 6 PM on a Friday...what were you thinking?!
Admin
" there was a management purge throughout the company"..."When upper management started looking at Bert's team as another possible cut, it was Emma who made sure they understood that they were doing the best they could with an unrealistic timeline"
Sounds like Emma didn't have much choice except to try and take the project across the line.
Admin
This Emma person ... can we clone her and get one of her to manage our project?
Admin
Sounds like you nee more practice, or more respect in your company. Business and BA's know, if the project is not regulatory mandated then any timeline they try to give me is ignored. They come to ask me for an estimate and for things I think are simple the answer is a standard 6 months. they used to balk at this but when they do so I ask them what facts and knowledge are they basing their expectations on. They ask me for a better estimate and I respond, give me a better spec and I will give a better estimate. Ultimately it comes down to this, no one complains if you come in a bit early, everyone complains if you are even a few days late. so start high and drop it down. Now remember I had one caveat in my above statement, regulatory changes, these things are mandated by law or regulation, those we have to hit no matter what and any other projects are put on hold in order to get these done and it is up to me to let the BA's and PM's know when that happens s that clock stops ticking on the other projects while we meet the regulator requirements.
Admin
It happens in all businesses. A client says 'I need this by Monday morning', on Friday afternoon. You say 'sure, no problem, but obviously it's going to cost quite a bit extra to get the work done on that timescale, I estimate [5x the normal cost]', and they say 'actually, Wednesday is fine'.
Admin
A lot of people will act unreasonably as a game. Some even get a stooge that will go along with it in front of you, just so you feel guilted into it.
They'll of course be let off because something will come up.
As soon as you feel like you're being pressured then get out.
Admin
Dilbert /is/ still funny, but Remy's too butthurt over Scott's politics to admit it.