Recent Feature Articles

Jul 2023

DXL

by in Feature Articles on

Managing requirements for even a simple project is a nightmare. As projects get more complicated, "requirements management" mutates into "systems engineering". The requirements for, say, an entire IT migration, or an automobile, or a lunar lander turn into a tree of requirements, where each implementation step is traced back to an overall master requirement at the root of the tree. Five to one, your average project isn't this complicated, but you don't want to ship a product missing features and have to say "it slipped my mind".

Enter a certain large vendor's Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System (DOORS). Doors allows the requirements for a large, complicated product, to be organized into objects which are further organized into modules, where each object is a requirement, paragraph, section, table, figure, or anything that explains the nature of requirements.


Slow Boat Construction

by in Feature Articles on

Subject: PC hangs on boot
Priority: High
Details:

When the customer boots the PC on site, it launches to the Windows desktop and hangs. Reboots don't fix it.


Classic WTF: The Contractor

by in Feature Articles on
It's a holiday in the US, so let's celebrate our independence by looking into the life on an independent contractor. Original --Remy

As developers, we often find ourselves working in stupid ways because the folks who were hired above/before us think that what they set up is ideal. While this happens in numerous industries, finance, especially at huge conglomerates, takes IT/Software-WTF to a whole new level. As contractors, we often get the we need your help in an emergency even though everything is unicorns and rainbows speech that precedes some meltdown for which they want you to take the blame.

EXPENSES

After taking a contract position at a large financial company, Bryan T. expected to see some amazing things. On the interview, they talked a big game and had even bigger budgets. It didn't take long to see some amazing things; but not the kind of amazing you'd think.