Most ridiculous client request
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How is it a problem? Programming is an iterative process.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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We have a system that raises work orders in another system. The process isn't, and cannot be instant. Requests get queued at the target system, and updates come back out on another queue. This can take up to 3 minutes (rubbish I know, but we do not have any control over the second system). The Work Order number is generated in the second system. When they click to request the job they want to print off a summary sheet. This they can do. It does not have the WO number on it as it does not exist yet. This is not good enough, and when I closed the request saying I could not make the system print off future data it was reopened with the comment that this was unacceptable.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
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How is it a problem? Programming is an iterative process.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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My Aunt-in-law was recently part of a team working on a new website design for her school. During the testing phase, they showed what they had to the management, it was generally well received, but the main critique they got back was: "The site is great, but it seems very Tuesday... we were looking for something more Thursday." She very quickly removed herself from the project as did most of the team involved.
Nat 'Squeak' Davies Squeak Technologies
She should have told them she was aiming for a late Friday night, just before closing time.
Software Zen:
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Welcome to the real world. In over 20 years I've yet to be in a demo meeting at which at least one user was more concerned with a font size/color than they were about the functionality and fitness for purpose of whatever was being shown. If it wasn't for users this would be the greatest job ever.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
<quote>If it wasn't for users this would be the greatest job ever</quote> If it wasn't for users, this job would not exists! We (developper and IT people in general) use to forget that the final user is our target, and that he usually thinks in a different way from us. But we are wrong, not them: In my experience, we (IT people) are the exception, and the rules is people caring about font size before functionality. At least until they catch some problem with functionality...
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We have a system that raises work orders in another system. The process isn't, and cannot be instant. Requests get queued at the target system, and updates come back out on another queue. This can take up to 3 minutes (rubbish I know, but we do not have any control over the second system). The Work Order number is generated in the second system. When they click to request the job they want to print off a summary sheet. This they can do. It does not have the WO number on it as it does not exist yet. This is not good enough, and when I closed the request saying I could not make the system print off future data it was reopened with the comment that this was unacceptable.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
When you say you have no control over the second system, do you mean no development control, or something else? If you are a customer of the second system, then you have precisely the same control over that as your customer does over your system. If the developers of this second system can't figure out a way to pre-generate the work order number for you to use, then maybe you should send me their manager's contact info. I bet I could figure out a way to do it. :) Simply declining to further investigate ways to solve the problem with that kind of response is, in fact, unacceptable. Any programming problem is solvable if one is willing to throw enough time and money at it. If you investigate and find out that it's going to cost X dollars and Y time to modify both systems, and the client is unwilling to pay that money and time, then you get to say, "OK, request closed."
Currently reading: "The Prince", by Nicolo Machiavelli
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We have a system that raises work orders in another system. The process isn't, and cannot be instant. Requests get queued at the target system, and updates come back out on another queue. This can take up to 3 minutes (rubbish I know, but we do not have any control over the second system). The Work Order number is generated in the second system. When they click to request the job they want to print off a summary sheet. This they can do. It does not have the WO number on it as it does not exist yet. This is not good enough, and when I closed the request saying I could not make the system print off future data it was reopened with the comment that this was unacceptable.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
Delay the print request until after you get the post back from the second system. Once you receive the post back, the work order number will be filled in. *It seems that there must be some other field (or timestamp?) that you can set when submitting the WO or else how the heck do you associate the submitted info with the WO that is generated. If they try to print the summary again, tell them it is already queued, pending WO assignment.
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When you say you have no control over the second system, do you mean no development control, or something else? If you are a customer of the second system, then you have precisely the same control over that as your customer does over your system. If the developers of this second system can't figure out a way to pre-generate the work order number for you to use, then maybe you should send me their manager's contact info. I bet I could figure out a way to do it. :) Simply declining to further investigate ways to solve the problem with that kind of response is, in fact, unacceptable. Any programming problem is solvable if one is willing to throw enough time and money at it. If you investigate and find out that it's going to cost X dollars and Y time to modify both systems, and the client is unwilling to pay that money and time, then you get to say, "OK, request closed."
Currently reading: "The Prince", by Nicolo Machiavelli
Every time you try a quick story on here someone demands a back story. I work for a company. We write some software for a number of companies that are owned by the same company as own us. We also provide all other IT functions. One of the companies has bought a large 'off the shelf' package. One written and sold by IBM. They have engaged another company to configure, customise, and install it. A number of other systems, some written by us, some by other companies, raise Work Orders in this system. There are standard interfaces into it. The project is years behind schedule and hundreds of thousands above budget. All through no fault of ours. The interfaces into and out of this bought system all depend on a queue on a cron. There is a time lag each way of up to a minute. There is also no guaranteed connectivity between any of the systems at any given time. They all work independently of each other, for a time at least. When the 'bug' of the WO Number not being available came in from a user in UAT I gave a detailed explanation as to why. Because of the problems in the relationship between our customer and the other provider they have decided no more work will be requested of them other than getting the damn thing in and live. The call was closed on the strength of my explanation by the project manager adding a comment that the issue was not one that would be addressed. It was then reopened and put back to me by the user with the unacceptable comment. But you're probably right, I was out of order and I'll start to work out how to fix the problem now.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
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Delay the print request until after you get the post back from the second system. Once you receive the post back, the work order number will be filled in. *It seems that there must be some other field (or timestamp?) that you can set when submitting the WO or else how the heck do you associate the submitted info with the WO that is generated. If they try to print the summary again, tell them it is already queued, pending WO assignment.
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
A user wanted to know if an email recipient never received an email. This was during a meeting. I stared at him for 30 seconds with a raised eyebrow. The wheels turned in his head, he thought about it, and reached the correct conclusion that this idea would not work. He withdrew the request. We eventually settled on a process where the recipient confirmed receiving the email by clicking on a link.
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Hey! I have that request right now! We have tablets in the field and we need them to query back and get information from the servers. Plus they need to have access to Google and Bing maps just incase MapPoint has the wrong location for an address (this happens more than I would like to admit). The tablet has no data connection, they aren't part of the domain so can't VPN in even if you had a wifi connection. Did you ever figure out how to get your PoS client working? If so, send code plz! Urgent! Best I have had so far is to send people with USB sticks and carrier pigeons. I can't figure out how to get the data back though since the person is on the move.
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Every time you try a quick story on here someone demands a back story. I work for a company. We write some software for a number of companies that are owned by the same company as own us. We also provide all other IT functions. One of the companies has bought a large 'off the shelf' package. One written and sold by IBM. They have engaged another company to configure, customise, and install it. A number of other systems, some written by us, some by other companies, raise Work Orders in this system. There are standard interfaces into it. The project is years behind schedule and hundreds of thousands above budget. All through no fault of ours. The interfaces into and out of this bought system all depend on a queue on a cron. There is a time lag each way of up to a minute. There is also no guaranteed connectivity between any of the systems at any given time. They all work independently of each other, for a time at least. When the 'bug' of the WO Number not being available came in from a user in UAT I gave a detailed explanation as to why. Because of the problems in the relationship between our customer and the other provider they have decided no more work will be requested of them other than getting the damn thing in and live. The call was closed on the strength of my explanation by the project manager adding a comment that the issue was not one that would be addressed. It was then reopened and put back to me by the user with the unacceptable comment. But you're probably right, I was out of order and I'll start to work out how to fix the problem now.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
Which is funny because that's a big part of what I do now (working in UX/UI).
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<quote>If it wasn't for users this would be the greatest job ever</quote> If it wasn't for users, this job would not exists! We (developper and IT people in general) use to forget that the final user is our target, and that he usually thinks in a different way from us. But we are wrong, not them: In my experience, we (IT people) are the exception, and the rules is people caring about font size before functionality. At least until they catch some problem with functionality...
I'm a seller and implementor of technology services that require 95% coding. I love my silly user requests -- it translates to payment for everything else that I enjoy in life. That's a good thing. Frankly, I've been in a large number of initial meetings where the feedback sounds much like what some posters are saying. But I see that as a communications failure... we try to get some buzz going so that by the time we get to a milestone demo, my customers are more into functionality and rollout, than they care about color of a banner. I've learned to keep it in my pants when they think the font size is "a little off".
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
About 10 years ago I got a call from an external client to the software company I was working for as a developer asking me to turn down the dialing screeches of the dial up modem next to him... A week later he phoned me asking how to open Windows Explorer... No I'm not kidding. :laugh:
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We have a system that raises work orders in another system. The process isn't, and cannot be instant. Requests get queued at the target system, and updates come back out on another queue. This can take up to 3 minutes (rubbish I know, but we do not have any control over the second system). The Work Order number is generated in the second system. When they click to request the job they want to print off a summary sheet. This they can do. It does not have the WO number on it as it does not exist yet. This is not good enough, and when I closed the request saying I could not make the system print off future data it was reopened with the comment that this was unacceptable.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
I guess I don't see the big problem. They request the WO number is printed on the summary sheet, so you spec out those changes: 1. Invent a time machine. 2. Use said machine to go into the future and determine what the WO number will be. 3. Print on summary With a good time machine API, 2 and 3 are trivial. Development costs for #1, however, might be more than your clients are willing to pay. :)
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What is the most ridiculous request you have received from a client? Today in a meeting while demoing the software (a WPF application) the customer complained about the fact that the checkbox ticks fade in and out when you click on them. Apparently it isn't instant enough. It's the closest I've come to just getting up and walking out of a meeting. :doh: btw, found out that the checkbox behavior is to do with the windows theme (windows 7) and just the standard way it works, but I will be able to re-template it and make it like the client wants.
One of my pet peeves is users who don't understand default behavior. With Web Programming, it's the user that needs a set of checkboxes to behave like radio buttons. And for many of these checkboxes, there are sub-checkboxes that behave the same way (as radiobuttons), but which need to be cleared (or not cleared) if the user clicks a different checkbox in the outer list. Can they actually describe all of the requested behavior? No. Do they expect you to extract the requested behavior from their explanation, as faulty as it may be? Of course they do; it's as clear as day to them.
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I guess I don't see the big problem. They request the WO number is printed on the summary sheet, so you spec out those changes: 1. Invent a time machine. 2. Use said machine to go into the future and determine what the WO number will be. 3. Print on summary With a good time machine API, 2 and 3 are trivial. Development costs for #1, however, might be more than your clients are willing to pay. :)
Don't go for the time api... it's energy use is very intensive... What you need is a good "Prophecy" api... People have been asking for one them for years
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Sounds as though they found nothing legitimate to "complain" about so rather than go home empty handed, they dug deep and offered the unrelated comment about the checkbox. You could look at this as a compliment.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
I have a subset of clients who don't seem to be happy unless there is something to complain about. In one case, out of hundreds of screens, one had a single word typo. You would have thought the world was going to end. I recall it was a finger fumble of "too" instead of "to".
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Every time you try a quick story on here someone demands a back story. I work for a company. We write some software for a number of companies that are owned by the same company as own us. We also provide all other IT functions. One of the companies has bought a large 'off the shelf' package. One written and sold by IBM. They have engaged another company to configure, customise, and install it. A number of other systems, some written by us, some by other companies, raise Work Orders in this system. There are standard interfaces into it. The project is years behind schedule and hundreds of thousands above budget. All through no fault of ours. The interfaces into and out of this bought system all depend on a queue on a cron. There is a time lag each way of up to a minute. There is also no guaranteed connectivity between any of the systems at any given time. They all work independently of each other, for a time at least. When the 'bug' of the WO Number not being available came in from a user in UAT I gave a detailed explanation as to why. Because of the problems in the relationship between our customer and the other provider they have decided no more work will be requested of them other than getting the damn thing in and live. The call was closed on the strength of my explanation by the project manager adding a comment that the issue was not one that would be addressed. It was then reopened and put back to me by the user with the unacceptable comment. But you're probably right, I was out of order and I'll start to work out how to fix the problem now.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
Oh, that makes it easy. You just change the assignment to the project manager. It's a management problem at that point, not a development one.