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By: Da Sissop
Date: 10/14/00 7:48:36 AM
# Replies: 16
It's a time of volatility and change at my consulting firm. For most of this year I've been on a project for a company in Dallas doing fun Active Server Pages stuff, but then they shot their budget and sent us packing, so I was "on the bench" for a couple of weeks. I got off the bench last week and started working on a project for Reliant Energy downtown, and that very same morning my consulting firm announced that they were laying of 12 benchwarmers after having had a "disasterous" 3rd quarter.
"Whew," says I, "I sure was lucky to fall into this project."
Wrong.
Seems I have fallen into a *doomed* project. There's me and a couple other guys from my firm who were brought in as staff for an existing Reliant in-house project, which has a hard deadline of December 15th, and as of yesterday, nobody really knows the details regarding the data inputs and outputs, or even how the users will interact with the product. There's no design specs. Oh, there's a great "concept," but I seriously doubt that's enough.
Now normally I might go and gripe to higherups in my company that I'd like to be taken OFF this project and put somewhere else. But in light of recent layoffs, I doubt that's the best career move right now. Sigh.
Working downtown is kinda neat, I guess. Lotsa beggars, though. More beggars than I've ever seen in one place in my entire life. I'm running out of one dollar bills. I figure I'll probably just go buy a box of "Beggin' Strips" this weekend. "Bums don't know it's not bacon!(tm)"
Response #1
By: Ralf
Date: 10/14/00 1:21:45 PM
Buy a roll of new golden dollars. Then wing 'em at the bums like you're trying to win a kewpie doll. They'll stop asking you soon enough.
Oh, and doomed development projects CAN be fun if approached properly:
- Instead of nice error messages when they miskey an entry, link the user to a randomly selected p0rn site, or maybe to one of your competitors.
- Stream disturbing midi music in the background for EVERY PAGE. (Deny you hear anything if they try to report the "bug".)
- Jive Filter is your friend. Nuff Said.
- Every 100th server hit, set the background colors to match the foreground colors. When the users complain, look at them like they're nuts and ask them to show you. When they can't reproduce it with you watching, shake your head incredulously and mutter something profane under your breath about alcoholism in the workplace. (If they *do* get lucky and show you a black-on-black page, simply reach over their shoulder and do a CTRL-A; it'll highlight the whole document, inverting the colors and making the text readable. Ask them why THEY didn't try CTRL-A in your most condescending "I'm surrounded by idiots" tone.)
- Randomly pop up dialogs requesting a valid VISA or Mastercard number & expiration date. If the user keys one in, redirect over to Amazon.com and buy a randomly generated quantity of randomly generated ISBN numbers, shipped to the Reliant home office, attention "Those Buttfucking Losers in HR".
- Replace all static GIF files (buttons, logos, banners) with subtly animated GIFs: a normal frame with a 200 second delay, followed by an erect penis for 1 second, followed by the normal frame again for 200 seconds, followed by 1 second of snuff video, followed by the normal frame again, followed by 1 more second of plane crashes or train wrecks. Loop indefinitely. Users will be profoundly disturbed but will not know why.
- If any nearby workstations are equipped with a subwoofer, have your ASP pages play a continuous background 33Hz tone (via .wav or midi). After a few minutes of this, users will experience nausea, cramps, and possible loss of sphincter control.
- Mount a cheap webcam in the mens room, overlooking the urinals. Offer a link on the main menu of your app called "memory leak troubleshooter" hooked up to a pagecounter. After a month, post a company-wide report listing names of users who accessed the link, how many times they visited, and durations of each visit. Make up statistics if nobody actually clicks the link.
Any more ideas?
Response #2
By: Fung Swazy
Date: 10/14/00 7:30:41 PM
There is a static pointer at the bottom right of the reply box on this page.
Response #3
By: Da Sissop
Date: 10/15/00 1:18:43 PM
What?
Response #4
By: Ralf
Date: 10/15/00 6:49:03 PM
Or, you could simply reply to every requirement with a non-sequitor.
Response #5
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 10/15/00 10:39:01 PM
I think it's time for Fung to reboot his computer.
I've inherited a web design gig, and while it's no walk through Hades, it *is* interesting to see what the previous designer left behind.
For instance, form elements named 'WhatTheFuck?'
Response #6
By: Capt. Spastic
Date: 10/16/00 4:45:11 AM
What exactly is the concept of the project?
Response #7
By: Ralf
Date: 10/16/00 5:28:08 AM
To keep from getting laid off.
Response #8
By: Gowan McGland
Date: 10/16/00 4:54:44 PM
Too late for me, I'm afraid.
Response #9
By: Ralf
Date: 10/17/00 5:43:51 AM
Aiy. That sucks.
So are you honing your ICQ skills?
What prospects does the future hold?
Response #10
By: Gowan McGland
Date: 10/17/00 7:47:53 AM
Yes, I'm going to be the world's first ICQ Administrator.
I'm not sure of the future yet as I only just found out a few days ago that it didn't reside with this company. I'm not overly concerned, though.
Response #11
By: Ralf
Date: 10/17/00 2:13:24 PM
ICQ administrator. Heh.
I betcha you could actually spam random ICQ users with invoices and some of them would pay.
Response #12
By: Da Sissop
Date: 12/23/00 7:13:57 AM
Update: Project of the Damned
Okay, so after two more rounds of layoffs at my consulting firm, it looks like we're finally lean and mean enough (on paper) to dupe some other larger companies into thinking we might be a good acquisition. Dunno anything more, other than one way or another, CommonVision will probably cease to be CommonVision in the next couple of months.
MEANwhile, back in the trenches, I have been kicking butt in the Reliant Energy project, to the point where it's probably not "doomed" after all. The deadline is December 31st (yeah, a lot of serious project analysis went into determining *that* deadline, I'm sure), and while the higherups are completely inflexible on the date, they are, apparently, a little flexible in what we deliver. So we are on pace to deliver a piece of crap for the 31st.
Squeezing out this piece of crap, however, has fallen squarely onto my shoulders. So I've been very very busy the last couple of weeks. Didja miss me? I was *trying* to login and post, but I'd usually fall asleep at the keyboard and wake up the next morning with "QWERTY" pressed into my cheek backwards.
But here's what I've been dealing with: This software project is a "Deal" analysis tool, for use by traders in the upcoming deregulated energy market. It consists of about 7 component modules (.dll's) which do things like forecast hourly weather conditions, system load, market prices and whatnot. My piece was initially to create the user interface (the CLIENT bit of client/server), and another programmer was going to do the server component, which held all the bizness logic, juggled all the dll modules, and did all the database access. My part was supposed to be relatively small potatoes.
So I started on this project in October. There was no project spec. There were no rough sketches on napkins of what the application should look like. There were no interfaces defined for the dll modules, since those developers would also be winging it. So, considering the state of the project in October and knowing that the deadline was in December, I knew it was a DOOMED project. But I figured, heck, *my* piece is such relatively small potatoes, I'll come out of it okay, and CommonVision (which at the time still seemed to have a potential future) would look good, and all would be well.
That plan *might* have held up, if at some point I hadn't overstepped my boundaries and begun working on the server component as well. That point occurred probably about the 2nd or 3rd week in October, when I had progressed about as far as I could in my designated CLIENT tasks, and no coding had even been begun on the SERVER tasks. So a day or two later I had the most primitive SERVER component passing data to and from my CLIENT component. I figured I was done with touching the SERVER stuff, that I would hand it off to the other programmer and he would take it from there. That never happened.
Our first simple proof-of-concept task was to have the SERVER query a database and return the results to the client. Querying a database is simple stuff. It's chapter 6 in every "Teach Yourself Visual Basic" book. A WEEK went by with no results returned. Finally he had something he was ready to test with the CLIENT component. Then, as fate would have it, his sytem crashed. No backups. Rather than wait another week, I cranked out the code, and about an hour later I had our demonstrable proof-of-concept. Seeds of discord were planted. In retrospect, maybe I should have waited another week.
Long story short, the dll modules have finally been delivered as of last week, the original SERVER programmer has gone ahead and taken his use-it-or-lose-it vacation time, and everybody knows that the ultimate success or failure of whatever is delivered on the 31st is entirely dependent on ME now.
I'm still planning to come out of this looking good, by the way. It's just a wee bit more stressful now.
Response #13
By: The Sorcerer
Date: 12/23/00 11:55:24 AM
There's nothing like being the "Cleanup Guy" for someone elses project, eh? :) Actually, as long as you make sure that your bosses are fully aware that you ARE trying to cleanup someone's fuckup and are fighting against the odds to save the day, then you're in a win-win situation. If the project fails, you still showed the willingness to step up to the plate and try your best to save a failing situation. If you pull it off...you're a hero! All of this, of course, assumes that you bosses are ACTUALLY capable managers...not just pricks with suits and a title.
Ya' know, CommonVision has been working on a Java based project for our IS people for a few months now, and it just went into wide beta a couple of weeks ago. The project was being run on our side by one of our newest junior Project Managers. One of my hats being Senior Project Manager for Corporate IT & IS, I took over babysitting her project for a week while she was in training. I was looking through the project notebook to get an idea of what was going on...and there was NOTHING. Just like you were talking about Fang. No project specs, no rough sketches of what the final application should look like, the user requirements document was a long and vague rambling document that was totally useless. No user validation standards...NOTHING but a MS Project Timeline! *SIGH*
I couldn't decide whether I was more surprised that our PM was setting herself up for such misery and likely failure, or that CommonVision was willing to take on a project that was so ill-defined that they're asking to get their ass handed to them when things don't go just exactly the way they should.
We're so far into the project now that damage control is all that can be done. I talked to our novice PM, warned her she is most likely to be getting a case of the red-ass from the internal customer (which is happening with regularity now) and the executive management team, and explained how she brought this upon herself. If nothing else, its a good learn-from-your-mistakes exercise.
Sorc'(Rev)
Response #14
By: Capt. Spastic
Date: 12/26/00 5:59:44 AM
Da Jim:
"I was *trying* to login and post, but I'd usually fall asleep at the keyboard and wake up the next morning with "QWERTY" pressed into my cheek backwards."
Mine usually ends up like
cvbnm
alt |=========| alt
Just becasue I know I drool, and try to keep the keyaboard dry.
:)
Jim, I do hope that some form of subversive retribution is planned for this scum that left your huevos out in the wind on this. B(lanket) & B(aseball Bat) party perhaps? :)
Response #15
By: Da Sissop
Date: 12/27/00 4:57:54 AM
Nah, seriously, from his perspective it probably feels like I just barged in and took over everything, because in effect that's what I did. But should I have just sat around while nothing was happening? I dunno. This is a learning experience for me in a lot of ways.
Sorc: What you are witnessing is the trademarked CommonVision Visionabling process. We adhere strictly to the Irrational Unified Process, pull ready-made component solutions from our CommonLib Repository, and place them on a silver platter as garnish for our asses.
Response #16
By: Capt. Spastic
Date: 12/27/00 5:32:11 AM
Well yeah you swept in and took it over. So what? Don't let that stand in your way of some mindless, senseless sweeping violence. Ya gotta have a hobby!