Project disasters
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There's not many programmers doing this for a living who haven't run into their share of nightmare experiences. Almost none of them have to do with our skills as programmers, but rather come as the result of poor management or just plain Stupid Decisions. Here's my current list of project disasters:
- Blown or unrealistic deadlines
- Scope creep
- Unstable software (poor quality)
- Clumsy software (poor design or programmers constrained by management)
- The never ending / never delivered project
- Arbitrarily cancelled projects
- Maintenance nightmares
- Crisis management – changing directions every 5 minutes
Am I missing any? Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
- Product name versus Product features Lately in my company, marketing people have announced the name for a new product. Immediately followed by "we have a product name, we still don't know what it might be and what it might do". X| - Release date Believe it or not, in my company the CTO sets a release date for the next product version release, just because he wants a product release every quarter. This task is done and communicated prior to estimating the cost of the features. Then he starts adding the features we are going to implement. Of course, the set of features keeps growing up as we go since a lot of things were not anticipated, let aside things that can't be anticipated. The point is : as the features are added, the date is not moved. X| Don't get me started on the stability of the product when we reach the deadline. After adding 3, 4 times more features than predicted, the software only works on surface (elementary workflows). And is released as is. - Business-driven versus technically-driven Features are implemented but we end up implementing features without business case or even a functional test case to rely on. So we implement features guessing what our customers might like in it. On one hand, (pre)sales people have a lot of feature requests from potential customers. On the other hand, none of these requests are actually taken into account when implementing features for the next release. Quite predictably, although I have joined the company 6 months ago only, I have been told many many times already by peers that sales are having hard time selling the product. Yes, indeed! X| - Copyright infringement We have simply hacked proprietary file formats from other vendors. File formats are used in "data connectors" in order to import competitors' files. Nothing has been done under partnership or whatsoever. Clear copyright infringement. Managers don't want afford to ask a lawyer to work with us and reduce the chances to be sued. X|
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There's not many programmers doing this for a living who haven't run into their share of nightmare experiences. Almost none of them have to do with our skills as programmers, but rather come as the result of poor management or just plain Stupid Decisions. Here's my current list of project disasters:
- Blown or unrealistic deadlines
- Scope creep
- Unstable software (poor quality)
- Clumsy software (poor design or programmers constrained by management)
- The never ending / never delivered project
- Arbitrarily cancelled projects
- Maintenance nightmares
- Crisis management – changing directions every 5 minutes
Am I missing any? Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
Christopher Duncan wrote: Am I missing any? Client insolvent/bankrupt and cannot pay past nor present development costs! Rocky Moore <><
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There's not many programmers doing this for a living who haven't run into their share of nightmare experiences. Almost none of them have to do with our skills as programmers, but rather come as the result of poor management or just plain Stupid Decisions. Here's my current list of project disasters:
- Blown or unrealistic deadlines
- Scope creep
- Unstable software (poor quality)
- Clumsy software (poor design or programmers constrained by management)
- The never ending / never delivered project
- Arbitrarily cancelled projects
- Maintenance nightmares
- Crisis management – changing directions every 5 minutes
Am I missing any? Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
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There's not many programmers doing this for a living who haven't run into their share of nightmare experiences. Almost none of them have to do with our skills as programmers, but rather come as the result of poor management or just plain Stupid Decisions. Here's my current list of project disasters:
- Blown or unrealistic deadlines
- Scope creep
- Unstable software (poor quality)
- Clumsy software (poor design or programmers constrained by management)
- The never ending / never delivered project
- Arbitrarily cancelled projects
- Maintenance nightmares
- Crisis management – changing directions every 5 minutes
Am I missing any? Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
From personal experience - "Language Barrier"... I used to work for a Japanese company in the UK and we were asked to develop a video server for news organisations. We wrote a very detailed specification and sent it over to Japan. They replied saying "please build this"... Skip forward a year++ and we find out that: 1. They never read the spec as it was too long - they would have preferred no more than a couple of pages with a big picture. 2. There was already another spec in Japanese which wasn't translated until too late. 3. The project was really for NHK (Japanese TV station) to play TV programmes and not for news organisations. That was a really fun time for us... Oh yes, whilst we are on the subject you can add "Inappropriate Technology". The above project was required to use 12" magneto-optical discs for the video storage and they could hold a whole .... 20 mins of video. About this time Tek were making hard disk based video recorders quite cheaply that could hold much more. Ever hear of magneto-optical broadcast storage? No... Sucessful wasn't it. James.
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Another timeless example! Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
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Christopher Duncan wrote: Am I missing any? Client insolvent/bankrupt and cannot pay past nor present development costs! Rocky Moore <><
Ouch! That's gotta hurt on payday... Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
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Vaporware => any product which is sold/hyped before actually being created. Clueless managers commonly require the use of such products by their design teams because the donuts and alcohol flow freely at Marketing Events designed to presell them. The Motorola 68000 was one such product (I believe the term first came into usage when it was announced), as the Wescon where it was announced seemed to be completely dominated by it; data sheets were handed out, contracts signed, and products using it were designed two years before actual hardware was available. I also recall a language - it may have been Java, as all I remember of it was that it started with a J - that US Navy contracts required to be used for all firmware development. The contracts also specified that all coding had to use a fully DoD-qualified compiler. No such compiler existed, nor was ever qualified during the life of the contracts we worked on. "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom
Roger Wright wrote: I also recall a language - it may have been Java, as all I remember of it was that it started with a J JOVIAL. I never used it, never met anyone who used it, and never saw any programs written in it. Sure heard a lot about it though... :suss:
Software Zen:
delete this; -
you really should read 'the mythical man month' and 'death march' and that list you will realise will just grow and grow...
Technically speaking the dictionary would define Visual Basic users as programmers.
But here again, a very generalized, liberal definition is being employed and it's wrong
- just plain wrong - Tom Archer 5/12/02Shaun Wilde wrote: you really should read 'the mythical man month' and 'death march' and that list you will realise will just grow and grow... Christopher Duncan could have written those two books :)
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africabrianwelsch wrote: I find my day goes by more smoothly if I never question other peoples fantasies. My own disturb me enough.
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- Updating software that should be scrapped
- Vaporware dependencies
- Reorganization
- Delayed Requirements w/out schedule relief
- Unmentioned Marketing promises to the customer
Just a few... "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom
Roger Wright wrote: Updating software that should be scrapped ...is software that was totally re-written yet could have done beter with a simple upgrade :) I know I am the cause for that problem often enough. New things rock, old things don't. But of late I have learnt to better identify what needs to be re-written and what just needs a slap and tickle. Roger Wright wrote: Delayed Requirements w/out schedule relief Very true!
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africabrianwelsch wrote: I find my day goes by more smoothly if I never question other peoples fantasies. My own disturb me enough.
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There's not many programmers doing this for a living who haven't run into their share of nightmare experiences. Almost none of them have to do with our skills as programmers, but rather come as the result of poor management or just plain Stupid Decisions. Here's my current list of project disasters:
- Blown or unrealistic deadlines
- Scope creep
- Unstable software (poor quality)
- Clumsy software (poor design or programmers constrained by management)
- The never ending / never delivered project
- Arbitrarily cancelled projects
- Maintenance nightmares
- Crisis management – changing directions every 5 minutes
Am I missing any? Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
- latest project methodology always a great way of terminating a project with extreme prejudice - decide to use the latest project methodology and then tell the team that they are to only use this methodology to design and implement the project - no one understands the methodology so more time is spent learning the methodology rather then working on the project
Technically speaking the dictionary would define Visual Basic users as programmers.
But here again, a very generalized, liberal definition is being employed and it's wrong
- just plain wrong - Tom Archer 5/12/02 -
Shaun Wilde wrote: you really should read 'the mythical man month' and 'death march' and that list you will realise will just grow and grow... Christopher Duncan could have written those two books :)
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africabrianwelsch wrote: I find my day goes by more smoothly if I never question other peoples fantasies. My own disturb me enough.
I felt so happy after I read those books as I realised - "it isn't just me"
Technically speaking the dictionary would define Visual Basic users as programmers.
But here again, a very generalized, liberal definition is being employed and it's wrong
- just plain wrong - Tom Archer 5/12/02 -
Roger Wright wrote: I also recall a language - it may have been Java, as all I remember of it was that it started with a J JOVIAL. I never used it, never met anyone who used it, and never saw any programs written in it. Sure heard a lot about it though... :suss:
Software Zen:
delete this;Now that you mention it the memory comes back... JOVIAL it was, and I still wonder whether anyone ever successfully fielded a project using it.:-D "Please don't put cigarette butts in the urinal. It makes them soggy and hard to light" - Sign in a Bullhead City, AZ Restroom
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Shaun Wilde wrote: you really should read 'the mythical man month' and 'death march' and that list you will realise will just grow and grow... Christopher Duncan could have written those two books :)
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africabrianwelsch wrote: I find my day goes by more smoothly if I never question other peoples fantasies. My own disturb me enough.
Paul Watson wrote: Christopher Duncan could have written those two books Did I mention my pen names? :-) Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
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Christopher, I'd like to see one day some stats on the percentage of projects completed compared with the way they were organised. I'm sure that projects with heavy SA involvement fail more than any other. Regardz Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
Warning Link to the minion's animation, do not use. It's a real shame that people as stupid as you can work out how to use a computer. said by Christian Graus in the Soapbox
Colin Davies wrote: I'd like to see one day some stats on the percentage of projects completed compared with the way they were organised. If you ever find such stats, I'd be interesteed in a read as well... Chistopher Duncan Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)