it.slashdot.org/it/05/03/31/1527257.shtml?tid=218
The article mentions Info-Tech's reasons: unrealist ic time frames, staff shortages, and poorly defined project scope. Howev er, the article's author lays the blame with vendors."
He lowers the balloon further and sho uts, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?" The man below says, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet a bove this field. "Well", says the balloonist, "ev erything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone." "I am", replies the ball oonist, "but how did you know?" "Well", says the man, "you don't know wh ere you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help . You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fa ult."
Monday August 04, @05:19AM) A man driving a backroad across country came upon a cowboy out driving ca ttle. He stopped, got out, and said to the cowboy, "If I can tell you ho w many cattle you have, would you give me your smallest cow?" Well, why not, give me your estimate," replied the cowboy. "Sir, you have exactly 400 head of cattle," the man said after some conte mplation. "Wow, that's exactly correct," said the cowboy surprised. So, the man wal ked over, picked up his prize and put it in his trunk. The cowboy, conce rned for the animal, asked, "Now, if I can tell you your profession, wou ld you let me win back the animal?" The man, somewhat taken aback, agreed with a chuckle, "Sure." "Sir, you are a consultant," said the cowboy without hesitation. "Well, you came out of nowhere telling me that you could give me an answe r to a question I didn't ask for a price that was over the top," said th e cowboy with a stern look.
Tuesday March 30, @02:23PM) In my experience when planning projects there is never ever enough testin g and contigancy time. Managers just seem to cut it out of plans because clients don't like payi ng for it.
You usually don't spend weeks testing how the wall interacts with the drywall and foundations. Non IT people just don't understand why code isn't written correctly the first time.
Friday November 26, @05:40PM) I think that's exactly the problem with software expectations. They alway s assume that building software is like building a house, or a bridge, o r a toaster. In other words, they always assume that building software i s done by experienced people who've built nearly identical software syst ems before. When an engineer designs and builds a new bridge it is entirely possible that no bridge like it has ever been designed or built before. Sure, the re are some base cases that just get churned out, but there are also big , new, creative designs that occur for bridges. How is that bridge engin eers usually manage to not have their bridges falling down all the time? Well, for starters the designer doesn't run with a "build and test" men tality. There are formal methods for bridge design, and if you assume th e properties of various basic components, there are methods to prove the stability and properties of the bridge. Yes, formal software methods are hard and time consuming compared to just building and testing. Formal bridge design is hard and time consuming c ompared to just building and testing. For some reason we accept that software should be just thrown together ra ther than properly designed and proved. Yes, there are plenty of project s for which the level of formality I'm talking about simply isn't requir ed - that's fine. My point is that there are plenty of projects for whic h the level of formality I'm talking about would be a damn good idea - y et it is never even contemplated let alone used. At worst you should be considering some level of formality for just those components of your sy stem that are most critical.
Frida y March 25, @09:43AM) 95 per cent of information technology groups "are not delivering some num ber of projects on time or to the full satisfaction of the business exec utive." Could it be that marketing is always overselling the product? well, you need to include feature X because we told c ustomer Y we already had that feature". This is often followed up by the engineer muttering under his/her breath "Dumb jock. So, this is another example of why pre-announcing products is a baaaaad i dea. Treat your customers with honesty and announce the product when it is ready and not before. Again, this is why vaporware only serves to irr itate your customers and build expectation of a product that is not alwa ys delivered. I also believe the fundamental problem is that managers these days (in ma ny cases) no longer come from the ranks and are not engineers. So, they do not always understand what is involved in 1) building the codebase 2) testing code base 3) proper interface design 4) end user testing 5) doc umentation 6) making sure it does not suck. The last point is where most executives seem to get hung up. More often t han not in most companies, executives really have no idea of what makes good code and all too often, what makes a good product. Come on now, a g ood portion of executives can barely use their personal computers to ans wer email or browse the Internet. When you have companies run by executi ves and managers that have come up through the ranks, you are much more likely to get quality which often is much more important than meeting an arbitrary deadline.
NO SALESPERSON should EVER be allowed t o sell this without taking a month long training course about what it ac tually does. I can't count the number of times customers were expecting 100% accuracy because thats what the salesman sold them.
I'm working on a project right now (software is installing as I type this ) where I'm supposed to migrate an existing web server to a new datacent er accross the country. The PM's take on the whole thing was "All you have to do is:" - Load the software on the new server. And now, as far as upper management is concerned, I'm the one that is beh ind schedule...
ca/) I recall when I was working Tech Support for a company, hearing a Sales d weeb asking one of the programmers "Do you remember that utility program you mentioned to me? I hope its available because I just sold it to a c ustomer." The utility program mentioned supported one of our products and was for i nhouse use only. It had been whipped up quickly in the devs spare time, had no documentation, no time spent on QA, was not an official product o f the company, and had a completely unfriendly UI because the dev had de veloped it piecemeal for his own use. Needless to say once it had been * sold* to a customer as a feature that attracted their interest enough to purchase our product, it became an official product and was quickly rew ritten to be more presentable, but that developer told me he would *neve r* mention anything to a sales guy again because they couldn't be truste d I have seen sales people sell a product based on a feature that they assu red the customer the product offered, then once the phone call was done and the sale completed, checked with Tech Support to see if it actually did offer the feature they sold it based on.
But now I've been dating a salesperson for a couple of years and I t hink that I see what the problem is. They don't care if there's a market for the product or if c ompanies have already set their budgets or whether the buying market is just soft for some other reason. But then her job gets threatened unless she hits "her" numbers. They really aren't her numbers - they are her m anager's number divided by the number of people he manages. Now it's not all his fault of course - he has a manager too who is doing the same th ing to him. Usually, it's because the board of directors has written a clause into a CEO contract that says that if he hits certain numbers, then it triggers a stock grant or a bonus. The board has the shareholders wanting big returns so they are pushing too - the b oard members have a financial stake in the company too of course. And th en you have the analysts who give everyone in charge an incentive to say that growth is going to be high so that they can offer a "buy" rating. But none of these people actually have to do any of the sales calls. So from the developers po...
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