Friday 22 October 2004

Seriously, I don't get it

Having indirectly dealt with managers for a while now, I have to say that I don't understand them and they don't understand software. They want us to build something and won't (or just can't) tell us what they want or need. When we give them what we managed to build based on our limited telepathic skills, they tell us what's wrong with it and we proceed to fix it. This takes forever. We tell them this. We ask for proper requirements before we start, and tell them that everything will be out much faster if we do it this way. We tell them it will be cheaper this way. Somehow they're happy with the slow, painful, frustrating way, and try to squeeze the quick schedule out of it.

My primary error is, apparently, assuming that they're thinkers. If they were thinking clearly and had some kind of rationale for their decisions, I imagine it would be similar to this: "If we see it quickly, but it's wrong, we can fix it, and software is so easy to fix and change that everything should be out about a week after we first see anything". We projected a project time of twelve to eighteen months. It's now been two years, and they're still acting the same way, only more panicked and more eager to see the wrong software quickly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - They're just not learning.
PPS - That's the one thing that can really frustrate me about people.

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