h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought that when a job needs to be put outside the company, you should argue with the providers, not amongst yourselves, withing the company?

I find myself in a strange situation.

There is a bit of code we need, to pull a fair amount of data out of a database, and export the stuff to Word and Excel.

There is a bit of requirements gathered a couple of years back, when the implementation project was young. We are now well into maintenance phase, and we have learned a lot of what we want out, what kind of code the provider tends to do, and there is a prototype.

We have found a number of problems with the prototype.

I have the (very strong, admittedly) opinion that the more you know about what you want and how, and the more you put in writing and present to providers, the easier it will be to code, the better can we test for approval, the fewer rounds of fixings do you need before accepting it.

This has now been banned. We are to go with the original requirements, and a short list of a few of the problems we knew about more than a month ago.

I am not told the reason why we should go for a thin set of requirements. I am being told to please the users, to be pragmatic, not make a fuss and go with the flow.

How will it please the users to get an output that cannot be trusted? Using an interface that gives little clue about the end result? Or even not getting the export at all, because the quality is too poor? Or not getting it until the second version is patched and released?

I asked for a superior to make a decision, go with thin requirements, or with more detailed ones. He pushed back and said to solve it amongst ourselves.

I am kept in the dark about the real reasons I think, and I will not be able to please the users and go with the flow both. Something's got to give.

Milla

Geez, Milla, what a situation!

If I were in your shoes and could afford to make a stink, I would call your users in for a conference, and make them see what kind of problems there really are! If they get snotty with you, or if your boss gets mean, I'd give them a letter of resignation. You don't deserve this!

For the first time in years, I read job ads... Surely that should be telling me something!

Matters are made more complicated because the system is set up on our site in Sweden, and on one site in UK, with a shared over-system-owner, and one local system owner on each site. So there are two organisations on the business side, and at least two on the 'computer' side, application management and support.

And I cannot rally up the UK users. Worrying the Swedish users would make me more impopular with management.

So I am gathering courage to write appliactions to a couple of IT companies. Problem is that I have only very little education in the computer sciences, and cannot code at all. But I'm good at requirements, and at interpreting between users and computer people.

Sorry to all computer people out there for using such a sweeping term about you all, I wish I knew better all the titles I should use instead.

And I wish I was brave enough to just resign, but being jobless scares me a lot!

Milla

Hope this all gets resolved well.

Actually, that's a pretty useful skill, being able to interpret between normal people and tech-talk.

Yeah, innit so! You'd think somebody should pay me barrel loads of money to do it

Actually, I have pestered the superior system owner to listen to my arguments, so I better make a good case tomorrow morning!

And the vendor called today, so I gave him a secret sneak info about our internal squabbles... He said not to come back to them with requirements until we agree amongst ourselves, and they have no interest in building something against one set of requirements, only to have it pulled apart completely for the second version!

It will be OK. Probably.

Milla

Update on the frustration.

Well. Actually, the problem was a little stranger than just not agreeing to what should be sent to the outsource coders.

In the end I have made (way too much) noise, and now think I have convinced some people that if you haven't appointed persons to do certain bits of work, some will be left to the four winds, and some bits will have all and any poking and confusing and contradicting.

One good thing coming up, is that the ruling group will sit down and appoint a Project group to manage such bits of code development.
If they can just agree on the priority and order of things, that will be good. All I need then is some facts on a paper about what I personally am supposed to do, and a bit about how to do it too.

So, kicking up a fuss might help in the end. I wish I could have laid back and let someone else do it, but I suppose the way I am is hard to change, and in a pressed situation more hard to change!

Milla

Well done m'dear.

*bows*


It has cost me a cupful of tears and some really strained evenings at home like in 'You are so tense, don't you love me?' 'Yes, but I don't like me or my job any at the moment' 'But you could be nicer at home though'


Milla

Congratulations! You made them change!

Anyway, I know it's difficult not to carry frustration home.

Well done in weathering such nights.

>>weathering nights
???

*feeling foreign again*

Milla

To weather. Means to endure. Ride out. To manage or cope.

Makes sense! Not as in washing / airing dirty laundry in public, then... What about nights? Meaning trouble?

Milla

By nights I m3ant th3 'strained evenings' you m3ntion3d...

Ah... *slaps forehead*
It's all better now, but he still thinks I am boring when I am online





Which is true I suppose.


Better go wash some windows now.

Milla

"Better go wash some windows now" That a Euphemism?

No that was as matter of fact as it gets! I did wash the windows on the entrance side of the house - only on the outside, mind, but it looks sooooo much better now! And now that the morning sun shines on the other side of the house, I might have to clean those too...

Milla

*Is sure a George Formby joke is due here*

*whishes she knew George Formby*

*at least who he is*

Did actually clean the other windows. Today it is snowing again.

Milla