- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
-
Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Edit Admin
Well, hey, I got in early on this one, at 8h10 CEST, while the newest article is normally released at 12h30 CEST. Gotta love that Random Article button!
Admin
And that is how gary learned the most important lesson of all. Do what the customer wants and not what you believe is right.
When it comes to teaching my young colleagues this lesson I always like to tell a tale I call the bridge builders parable.
There was once a bridge builder who built bridges. One day, a man comes into his office and asks for a suspension bridge. It should be many kilometers long, have 6 lanes for traffic and a lane for trains on top. All made with the finest steel and concrete money could buy. Money, he said, was not an issue.
Now, the bridge builder was curious. So he asked the customer where he would want the bridge. "In front of my house." the customer replied. And why would he want a bridge in front of his house? "Well", the customer explained. "There is a little dip in my driveway. And every time it rains it becomes a puddle. And some times I step in it and get my shoes wet."
That, the customer concluded, was most unacceptable.
Now, my friend, you are the bridge builder. And there are a great many things you could do.
You could try and teach the man to watch where he is going. You could offer to fill in the hole with some concrete for cheap. You could put up a plank, buy him rubber boots or even just build a tiny little decorative bridge to cover the gap. And I am sure you can come up with plenty more your self.
But above all else, what matters is not what you want to do but what you must not do. And that is being an idiot.
So just take the money and build the man his bridge.
Edit Admin
The old application didn't have five nines of availability; it had nine fives of availability.
Edit Admin
We have a different policy. If the client insists we will build what they want how they want it, but not without first asking the right questions and suggesting alternatives. 99% of the time our clients listen and agree to our suggestions. In the other 1% they just want Excel but, you know, enterprisey (web frontend backed by a SQL Server database). In both instances they're happy because they either got a tailor-made solution to their problem or plainly what they asked for and usually become repeat clients, which is why a sizeable chunk of our income comes from clients we've had for 15+ years.
Admin
That's the correct approach if you are client facing and actually have control over the actual project design. Been there, done that, agree with you.
But in situations like that described in the text here that is not the case. If you are an employee and you have a bunch of tickets to solve you solve those tickets. And if the whole thing is stupid and you'd rather be doing things you think smart that's a you problem. Don't act like an architect if that's not your job.
Admin
Or, to put it another way. If you say something stupid than that is stupid.
If I as your senior and architect say something stupid odds are it's not and I just know and understand things you don't. But by all means, ask. I could be wrong.
But if the guy with the pointy hair comes into the office one day and demands that bridge. That's not stupid. It's a ticket.
Edit Admin
I mean the story seems to insinuate that he's a Lead or Manager of some kind so that would be his job, no?
Admin
I find myself wondering how many of the tickets were even actionable. It sounds like there were many that were not, and depending on how annoyed I was, might well simply... close them en masse. Along with all the ones that weren't on the precious roadmap which probably wasn't a good description of anything anyone wanted even at the time.
"It's too expensive to figure out if we still want that", but they're willing to spend however much the team costs on doing it anyway. Just how expensive are "large" meetings at this company?
And this isn't "we don't pay you to think" work either.
Admin
So the guy has at least three managers and didn't bother to get buy-in from any of them, or even discuss his plan, before diverting his whole team on a major re-architecture push?
Someone needs to learn a lesson in office politics...
Admin
Probably more than half. But when it comes to these things what matters is that you follow procedure, flag them as blocked and use the official channels to pass that information upward where it will be forgotten if it is read at all. You can't just close or ignore them on your own accord.
Imagine how much differently this meeting would have gone if the OP had replied with: "I understand, but here is a stack of printed emails about all those tickets and why each and every one of them was nonsense. And of course I fully understand to remember them so I took the effort of printing them out."
Admin
One makes you look like a good pawn. The other makes you look insubordinate.
Admin
They defined measurable improvements as "absolutely no progress". That is not the phrasing of someone who is both acting in good faith and willing to communicate clearly. So I fully expect such managers to be upset about being asked to clarify the morass of badly worded tickets and vague roadmap entries.
I also fully expect that they would be mad if OP had stuck to the letter of the roadmap too. Because chances are they don't want the roadmap as written, they want the one inside their heads that is too expensive to get written down for some reason.
You can't win against a manager who has decided they don't like you. Had OP presented the stack of "explain this ticket plz" they'd in all probability have complained about wasting so much time when it's "obvious". Had he stuck to his own interpretation, why, that's wrong too.