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Admin
YouFrist!
Admin
Classic tale of client doesn't actually know what they want until after you give them what they didn't want but asked for anyway.
There's a hair on the left side of the paper. For some reason it's very distracting to me, I just want to brush it off. Can not be unseen.
Admin
This happened to me recently. I was to make a questionnaire site for inline QA. Everything was good, until the manager wanted all of the answers in the site to (instead of being reasonable to the question) be merely "pass", "fail", or "n/a". This completely obviates the point of the questionnaire, and ignores the perfectly functional system to determine (via business rule, instead of auditor opinion) this pass/fail state. Silver lining: I don't think it will actually make it to production (yes, they're using the dev server's" demo" instance as if it were production, yes I know this is a :wtf:, no I can't fix it until things start moving again).
Admin
God, how did I miss that? Well, I know how- by focusing on the purple dot on the opposite corner.
Admin
It also happens that a new group rotates through and doesn't know what the first group asked for and doesn't care and just wants what they want.
Filed Under: Job Security
Admin
This story reminds me SO much of the Abbott & Costello routine "Who's On First".
Admin
Exactly! That's the one.
Admin
Communication is hard.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but in stories like this one, my intuition tells me the discussion wasn't nearly as clear and well explained as it was in the stick figure recap. A lot of users hear technical terms and their mind just refuses to comprehend anything that's being said as long as it's not the magic words they started with. Taking the time to explain it in a way they understand can work wonders for these sorts of misunderstandings.
Admin
That works fine until their boss complains that you are taking too much of their time and you should be getting on with your job and not badgering other members of staff.
Admin
Did not see. Must be because I have dogs. You get blind to dog hair...
Admin
Did anyone else hear "But ours go up to 11" in the back of their heads during the presentation there?
Admin
(coughfastprototypingcough)
Admin
Yes, so sad. But probably not for the reason you think: [image]
Admin
Dunno.... Randall Munroe might draw it more realistically :smiling_imp:
Anyway, TRWTF is anyone being willing to work 6 or 7 days/week as part of the project plan (as opposed to the oh-shit brief catchup).
Admin
meh, I've had more insane requirements gathering than that. C+, would not recommend to friends.
And hell, all that shizz is just billable hours. You want to pay me to hack into your system a way to have a phantom employee appear on your reports so you can rotate them for no reason at all. Please to be depositing here, thank you, drive through.
Year later, you want to pay me to unhack that phantom person back OUT of the reports, because you realized you were insane? No problem, we now take MasterCard!
This kind of crap is Business As Usual in the Enterprise world. It only rises to the level of a problem when they get pissy about it, accuse you of not reading their minds properly, or not suggesting the sane thing in the first place (which is why wise developers document the shizz out of EVERYTHING when in contact with the unwashed masses). If you are free-lancing, NEVER release this kind of thing to the customer until they PAY. If you are in corporate, then just escalate it up to management along with your documentation showing them to be retarded. Either way, problem solved.
The bottom line is, "business" and sales people are basically functionally retarded when it comes to technology. They don't care about it, they don't want to spend any time learning ANYTHING about it, they just want it to WORK. That is why they pay US lots of money to make it WORK, while the people refusing to pick up new skills tend to make a lot less than us (well, than me anyway, and I am sure for the rest of you senior people as well).
TL;DR
I am not surprised by this, non-tech people are retarded. Charge 'em the full amount, and whistle all the way to the bank. ^_-
Admin
Been there. I was actually reprimanded for calling a meeting with the staff using some of our custom enterprise software I was responsible for, because they kept wasting my time asking for things already in it, asking for things upper-management had decreed would not be allowed, or just bitching that it didn't work the way their ancient software used to work (we're talking DOS command line here, folks). I called the meeting, sat their heads of their departments down, walked them through the stuff that was quickly becoming their FAQ list, and explained in enough detail that they FINALLY understood. They were happy, and I was happy.
Of course, they all had to ACCOUNT for how they had spent that hour, and they all billed it to me and the software development department (I was young and naive then, had no idea about cross-department billing). And THAT caused a shit-storm, because I hadn't been authorized to do that.
Nevermind the fact that I would, FREQUENTLY be called down to speak to those people one-on-one for 15-30 minutes at a time, ALL THE TIME, dealing with that FAQ list. Because I had never cross-billed my time (because I considered dealing with it part of my job, and it never even occurred to me), then it wasn't a quid pro quo.
I got ... hostile ... to the users in that department, after that. And they learned pretty quickly to be very polite and accommodating to me, if they ever wanted to see their features see the light of day :D
Admin
Or better yet, they didn't properly budget for the requirements phase and run out of money too quickly, so your contract gets terminated.
Happened to me lo these many years ago when I was still working as a tester.
Admin
And it can apparently be used to work around the proxy somewhat! Bookmarked, saved, starred, and liked!
Before-post edit: But it doesn't help me access YouTube, bummer.
Admin
Is there a transcript for those of us who are not able to currently watch the video?
Admin
Not yet! I haven't been able to figure out how to get the auto-generated subtitles yet.
Admin
Like this?
[image]Admin
Admin
So, this is Remy's second video in this style (less awesome than the first, but I hope he does more). Definitely go watch the other when you can! This time, it's the story of some weird requirements he was given.
Basically, there's this company that needed a system to track time so that they could allocate time to different people. This is all well and good, but if you have exactly seven people, they get the same days every week.
Their complaint was that the new system doesn't support 'the eighth man' on their COR reports, which, after quite a lot of argument turned out to be a phantom person that they use to offset things. It's functionally equivalent to using the first person twice, but they were adamant that they needed 'the eighth man' in their COR report, which, being badly named, caused a lot of confusion as it is verbally the same as 'core'.
When the product was done, tested, and out, they said it was completely wrong, because they just needed the first person to show up twice, because it's easier.
Admin
FTFY
Admin
Was the the Lord of the Rings one?
Admin
One of the sales in my ex-company decided they had enough of it, and just email the contact point the list of features available and the price tag for these features, then let the PM at they side do the mix and match themselves.
Admin
Yes.
Admin
If there's any kind of web site more disruptive to the work environment than one about motor vehicles, I'm not aware of it.
Irony potential: I'll bet your company manufactures products for automobiles.
Admin
Bet technically lost. We used to do motor homes, but no longer. Though we do have a NASCAR driver (which is also blocked :facepalm:).
Admin
Tvtropes. And no, I won't link to it because then nobody would get anything done. ;)
Admin
Don't forget Wikipedia.
Or possibly Stack Overflow being disruptive to the ecosystem in general and man-hours lost to the gamification bullshit.
Admin
I've found it to be less of a problem since I reined back to just doing it as a user support channel.
Admin
So... if their list is an exact multiple of 7 names, they end up with 1 person with twice as much chance of getting overtime as the rest of the people. That's not good. (Luckily, since 7 is prime, only lists of names with an exact multiple of 7 are affected.)
A better solution would be:
If and only if the list's length is an exact multiple of 7, rotate the list by one every time you go through it. For the
kth person, the list is rotated byfloor(k/n).Then, instead of this:
[image]You have this:
[image]And everybody's happy.
Admin
Why not just randomize the whole fricking thing?
Admin
thanks for info
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Admin
Actually, a dedicated team of developers and clear client requirements are the things you need to avoid "tales of software development." I like it when things go smoothly. When you find those teams, as I found at solveit.dev , your project will be held professionally.