Code freeze
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We have one. On friday. As in 3 days from now. Trouble is, the highly paid consultants who came it to help "finish off" the project have completely broken our test console. This means that unless they fix a steadily growing list of major (read: catastrophic) issues, we'll be "freezing" untested code. Hurray. Remaining issues: - data acquisition console machines blue-screens during scans - one control application spits out run-time errors (VB) and dies - another control application gets itself into a state where we have to restart it in order to do two successive scans - when it runs, calibration takes roughly 2 hours instead of the required 15 minutes - last I heard we could scan at 30rpm instead of the required 200rpm ... For those of you not following the drama, this is an inspection system for making sure that the nuclear power plants in Ontario (and Quebec possibly) run safely. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
I hope they have good acceptance tests. :~ Seriously, tell your boss that you aren't happy shipping the code in this condition. At least, that's what I'd do if I had the guts :mutter: I have to ask: how did the code get into a state where it performs so badly? Are those criteria actually achievable, or it did a salesman spec the system? :) The boss needs to take the flak and tell the customer that the software won't be ready for another :looks at bugs, watch, calculates: eight weeks, and let the customer decide whether to continue with the project or kill it. Ultimately it's someone else's money you're wasting (or earning, depends how you look at it :suss: ) -- Mike Dimmick
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I hope they have good acceptance tests. :~ Seriously, tell your boss that you aren't happy shipping the code in this condition. At least, that's what I'd do if I had the guts :mutter: I have to ask: how did the code get into a state where it performs so badly? Are those criteria actually achievable, or it did a salesman spec the system? :) The boss needs to take the flak and tell the customer that the software won't be ready for another :looks at bugs, watch, calculates: eight weeks, and let the customer decide whether to continue with the project or kill it. Ultimately it's someone else's money you're wasting (or earning, depends how you look at it :suss: ) -- Mike Dimmick
Mike Dimmick wrote: Seriously, tell your boss that you aren't happy shipping the code in this condition Well, the trick is I'm just another contractor on site. Thankfully, it's not on my boss's head if this doesn't work out. That can't be said for the other contractor they brought in (along with a team of 10 other developers). He has a million dollar contract or something. Mike Dimmick wrote: how did the code get into a state where it performs so badly? Are those criteria actually achievable, or it did a salesman spec the system? A valid question. The original specs were based on the specs from a marketing brochure for one of the pieces of hardware we use. As soon as the hardware manufacturer found out we actually needed those specs, they pulled the whole line. Then, rather than re-spec'ing and perhaps reconsidering the project, this company just continued on hoping that something would work out. It's possible that we could get the required speeds, but at present it's looking pretty bad and the guy that wrote all the DSP code is away on holidays. :) Mike Dimmick wrote: The boss needs to take the flak and tell the customer that the software won't be ready for another :looks at bugs, watch, calculates: eight weeks, and let the customer decide whether to continue with the project or kill it. Unfortunately, this has been going on for the better part of the last year. It's come to the point where we've spent $35 million on the project so far (or something) and the upper management is quite annoyed that we don't have a stable system to show for it. Basically if it doesn't work in the test phase (next month I think), it will be canned. J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
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Mike Dimmick wrote: Seriously, tell your boss that you aren't happy shipping the code in this condition Well, the trick is I'm just another contractor on site. Thankfully, it's not on my boss's head if this doesn't work out. That can't be said for the other contractor they brought in (along with a team of 10 other developers). He has a million dollar contract or something. Mike Dimmick wrote: how did the code get into a state where it performs so badly? Are those criteria actually achievable, or it did a salesman spec the system? A valid question. The original specs were based on the specs from a marketing brochure for one of the pieces of hardware we use. As soon as the hardware manufacturer found out we actually needed those specs, they pulled the whole line. Then, rather than re-spec'ing and perhaps reconsidering the project, this company just continued on hoping that something would work out. It's possible that we could get the required speeds, but at present it's looking pretty bad and the guy that wrote all the DSP code is away on holidays. :) Mike Dimmick wrote: The boss needs to take the flak and tell the customer that the software won't be ready for another :looks at bugs, watch, calculates: eight weeks, and let the customer decide whether to continue with the project or kill it. Unfortunately, this has been going on for the better part of the last year. It's come to the point where we've spent $35 million on the project so far (or something) and the upper management is quite annoyed that we don't have a stable system to show for it. Basically if it doesn't work in the test phase (next month I think), it will be canned. J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Jamie Hale wrote: That can't be said for the other contractor they brought in (along with a team of 10 other developers) Do project managers ever read case studies? :rolleyes: John www.silveronion.com[^]
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Mike Dimmick wrote: Seriously, tell your boss that you aren't happy shipping the code in this condition Well, the trick is I'm just another contractor on site. Thankfully, it's not on my boss's head if this doesn't work out. That can't be said for the other contractor they brought in (along with a team of 10 other developers). He has a million dollar contract or something. Mike Dimmick wrote: how did the code get into a state where it performs so badly? Are those criteria actually achievable, or it did a salesman spec the system? A valid question. The original specs were based on the specs from a marketing brochure for one of the pieces of hardware we use. As soon as the hardware manufacturer found out we actually needed those specs, they pulled the whole line. Then, rather than re-spec'ing and perhaps reconsidering the project, this company just continued on hoping that something would work out. It's possible that we could get the required speeds, but at present it's looking pretty bad and the guy that wrote all the DSP code is away on holidays. :) Mike Dimmick wrote: The boss needs to take the flak and tell the customer that the software won't be ready for another :looks at bugs, watch, calculates: eight weeks, and let the customer decide whether to continue with the project or kill it. Unfortunately, this has been going on for the better part of the last year. It's come to the point where we've spent $35 million on the project so far (or something) and the upper management is quite annoyed that we don't have a stable system to show for it. Basically if it doesn't work in the test phase (next month I think), it will be canned. J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Jamie Hale wrote: Basically if it doesn't work in the test phase (next month I think), it will be canned. Will that mean you lose a job? Or simply that another system will have to be developed? How big a deal is it? Sounds like an interesting story... :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
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Jamie Hale wrote: Basically if it doesn't work in the test phase (next month I think), it will be canned. Will that mean you lose a job? Or simply that another system will have to be developed? How big a deal is it? Sounds like an interesting story... :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
What it means is that after 2 and a half years, I'll finally get to work on something else. :) It means that the existing system will have to suffice, despite it being slower (and hard-coded for PCs with a very specific 15-year-old Trident video card). Plus there's another system (cheaper by several orders of magnitude) in the works that's sort of a hybrid of the old and the new - it's set to be tested around the same time. It's quite an interesting story. I'd really like to get it all someday. Most of it is straight out of the book Anti-Patterns. I snicker lots when I flip through that book. :) J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
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Jamie Hale wrote: That can't be said for the other contractor they brought in (along with a team of 10 other developers) Do project managers ever read case studies? :rolleyes: John www.silveronion.com[^]
Someone, somewhere, decided that if we have more fingers on the keyboard, we'll finish faster. J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
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We have one. On friday. As in 3 days from now. Trouble is, the highly paid consultants who came it to help "finish off" the project have completely broken our test console. This means that unless they fix a steadily growing list of major (read: catastrophic) issues, we'll be "freezing" untested code. Hurray. Remaining issues: - data acquisition console machines blue-screens during scans - one control application spits out run-time errors (VB) and dies - another control application gets itself into a state where we have to restart it in order to do two successive scans - when it runs, calibration takes roughly 2 hours instead of the required 15 minutes - last I heard we could scan at 30rpm instead of the required 200rpm ... For those of you not following the drama, this is an inspection system for making sure that the nuclear power plants in Ontario (and Quebec possibly) run safely. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Jeez, we don't let any microsoft stuff anything near our chemical plant.. sheesh!! My world tour What I do now.. "I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered" George Best. "I suppose if it was a choice between bon jovi and the interior of a car, the car would win, even it didnt have a radio and I had to sit in silence" James Simpson on Light Metal.
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We have one. On friday. As in 3 days from now. Trouble is, the highly paid consultants who came it to help "finish off" the project have completely broken our test console. This means that unless they fix a steadily growing list of major (read: catastrophic) issues, we'll be "freezing" untested code. Hurray. Remaining issues: - data acquisition console machines blue-screens during scans - one control application spits out run-time errors (VB) and dies - another control application gets itself into a state where we have to restart it in order to do two successive scans - when it runs, calibration takes roughly 2 hours instead of the required 15 minutes - last I heard we could scan at 30rpm instead of the required 200rpm ... For those of you not following the drama, this is an inspection system for making sure that the nuclear power plants in Ontario (and Quebec possibly) run safely. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Maybe I won't catch that flight back to Toronto on Friday... cheers, Chris Maunder
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Jeez, we don't let any microsoft stuff anything near our chemical plant.. sheesh!! My world tour What I do now.. "I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered" George Best. "I suppose if it was a choice between bon jovi and the interior of a car, the car would win, even it didnt have a radio and I had to sit in silence" James Simpson on Light Metal.
Well, nobody asked for my opinion when they were spec'ing the thing out. :( J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
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Maybe I won't catch that flight back to Toronto on Friday... cheers, Chris Maunder
You'll be fine... just make a quiet request that the pilot approach Pearson from the west. And make sure you give him a shifty-eyed look too. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
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We have one. On friday. As in 3 days from now. Trouble is, the highly paid consultants who came it to help "finish off" the project have completely broken our test console. This means that unless they fix a steadily growing list of major (read: catastrophic) issues, we'll be "freezing" untested code. Hurray. Remaining issues: - data acquisition console machines blue-screens during scans - one control application spits out run-time errors (VB) and dies - another control application gets itself into a state where we have to restart it in order to do two successive scans - when it runs, calibration takes roughly 2 hours instead of the required 15 minutes - last I heard we could scan at 30rpm instead of the required 200rpm ... For those of you not following the drama, this is an inspection system for making sure that the nuclear power plants in Ontario (and Quebec possibly) run safely. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Jamie Hale wrote: - one control application spits out run-time errors (VB) and dies ... making sure that the nuclear power plants in Ontario (and Quebec possibly) run safely Our power plants are managed by VB code ? :wtf: Thank god i moved to San Diego. :) ...cmk Save the whales - collect the whole set
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You'll be fine... just make a quiet request that the pilot approach Pearson from the west. And make sure you give him a shifty-eyed look too. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
They don't allow types like me near tha cabins anymore :( cheers, Chris Maunder
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Not mission critical. They shut the reactor down, then we do the fuel-channel inspections. And hope that our scanning system works. :) J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Jamie Hale wrote: They shut the reactor down, Um... If I would have to go in and do the inspections, I would call that part very much "mission critical" :~
"Der Geist des Kriegers ist erwacht / Ich hab die Macht" StS
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygen -
We have one. On friday. As in 3 days from now. Trouble is, the highly paid consultants who came it to help "finish off" the project have completely broken our test console. This means that unless they fix a steadily growing list of major (read: catastrophic) issues, we'll be "freezing" untested code. Hurray. Remaining issues: - data acquisition console machines blue-screens during scans - one control application spits out run-time errors (VB) and dies - another control application gets itself into a state where we have to restart it in order to do two successive scans - when it runs, calibration takes roughly 2 hours instead of the required 15 minutes - last I heard we could scan at 30rpm instead of the required 200rpm ... For those of you not following the drama, this is an inspection system for making sure that the nuclear power plants in Ontario (and Quebec possibly) run safely. :~ J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."
Jamie Hale wrote: nuclear power plants in Ontario Like the one in in Pickering that's close to where I live?? (and even more importantly, close to the CP servers) :-D I prefer to wear gloves when using it, but that's merely a matter of personal hygiene [Roger Wright on VB] Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. [Rich Cook]
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Jamie Hale wrote: nuclear power plants in Ontario Like the one in in Pickering that's close to where I live?? (and even more importantly, close to the CP servers) :-D I prefer to wear gloves when using it, but that's merely a matter of personal hygiene [Roger Wright on VB] Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. [Rich Cook]
That would be the one. :) J
"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees."