The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Ultrabase

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2020-07-27

After a few transfers across departments at IniTech, Lydia found herself as a senior developer on an internal web team. They built intranet applications which covered everything from home-grown HR tools to home-grown supply chain tools, to home-grown CMSes, to home-grown "we really should have purchased something but the approval process is so onerous and the budgeting is so constrained that it looks cheaper to carry an IT team despite actually being much more expensive".

A new feature request came in, and it seemed extremely easy. There was a stored procedure that was normally invoked by a scheduled job. The admin users in one of the applications wanted to be able to invoke it on demand. Now, Lydia might be "senior", but she was new to the team, so she popped over to Desmond's cube to see what he thought.

25 comments - Last comment @ 2021-10-28

Science Is Science

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2020-07-22

Bruce worked for a small engineering consultant firm providing custom software solutions for companies in the industrial sector. His project for CompanyX involved data consolidation for a new oil well monitoring system. It was a two-phased approach: Phase 1 was to get the raw instrument data into the cloud, and Phase 2 was to aggregate that data into a useful format.

30 comments - Last comment @ 2020-07-28

Mega-Agile

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2020-07-20

A long time ago, way back in 2009, Bruce W worked for the Mega-Bureaucracy. It was a slog of endless forms, endless meetings, endless projects that just never hit a final ship date. The Mega-Bureaucracy felt that the organization which manages best manages the most, and ensured that there were six tons of management overhead attached to the smallest project.

After eight years in that position, Bruce finally left for another division in the same company.

17 comments - Last comment @ 2020-08-06

A Revolutionary Vocabulary

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2020-07-13

Changing the course of a large company is much like steering the Titanic: it's probably too late, it's going to end in tears, and for some reason there's going to be a spirited debate about the bouyancy and stability of the doors.

Shena works at Initech, which is already a gigantic, creaking organization on the verge of toppling over. Management recognizes the problems, and knows something must be done. They are not, however, particularly clear about what that something should actually be, so they handed the Project Management Office a budget, told them to bring in some consultants, and do something.

26 comments - Last comment @ 2023-01-30

ABCD

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2020-07-02

As is fairly typical in our industry, Sebastian found himself working as a sub-contractor to a sub-contractor to a contractor to a big company. In this case, it was IniDrug, a pharmaceutical company.

Sebastian was building software that would be used at various steps in the process of manufacturing, which meant he needed to spend a fair bit of time in clean rooms, and on air-gapped networks, to prevent trade secrets from leaking out.

31 comments - Last comment @ 2023-06-30

Recent Feature Articles

Ultrabase

Science Is Science

Mega-Agile

A Revolutionary Vocabulary

ABCD