![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ding Dong, The Project is Dead!
Jan. 4th, 2006 11:21 pmThe Wicked Project is Dead!
The Project from Hell, that is.
6 months ago..
"I'd like to schedule 2 weeks in a row off in December. I've got lots of vacation time accrued and people haven't even blocked off their summer vacations yet. I figure I'm way ahead of the curve and will be able to get full blessing. Mind you, I haven't had two weeks in a row off since '94 when I was unemployed for a few months."
"That is impressive, but now we must tell you the extremely sad tale of the upcoming Project (Code named Azuma for the curious). It'll be fun and rewarding. We only need you as business reference and consulting as needed. Obviously at the end we'll use you for full-day stretches of use acceptance testing for about two weeks in December. So we're very sorry but you can't have time off in December."
"Fine. I'll take one week, plus the mandatory shut down week, giving you the two weeks in between, and I'll take the two weeks at the end of January, since everything will be running smoothly by then. At least according the the project data sheets."
We have a hearty handshake and I take a codeine to relieve the pain of my gritted teeth.
Along comes October...
"Guess what, the Project is pushing to January. We'll need you exclusively for the whole month."
"Bite me. You stole December and you can't have January."
"You're absolutely critical to the success of the Project. Can't you push out your time off?"
"No. But it's not so bad as all that. I bet you'll push again and it'll land on whatever new time slot I would have picked."
"Please?"
"No. You got two weeks in December and a two week window in January. Use them wisely."
Along comes December...
"Here's how we re-designed your entire job flow from beginning to end! Isn't it neat?"
"How interesting. Did you mean to allow, for example, this horrible end result that conflicts with all our business rules?"
"We can fix that. Just come up with all the formulas in Excel by tomorrow and we can have the programmers in Germany try to implement it. Otherwise it has to stand as is."
The Next Day...
"Here you go. A simple, elegant series of simple processes reduced to five formulas in Excel."
"Can you fix the rest of the planning module for us too?"
"Did you even ask what the end users actually wanted or needed in the past three months while you were locking code?"
"No. Why would we do that?"
Today...
"We're going to be extending the Project out another six months. It seems all of our business partners rebelled, banded together and staged a boycott until we can prove we actually care about their workload and the value of the completed Project."
The Project from Hell, that is.
6 months ago..
"I'd like to schedule 2 weeks in a row off in December. I've got lots of vacation time accrued and people haven't even blocked off their summer vacations yet. I figure I'm way ahead of the curve and will be able to get full blessing. Mind you, I haven't had two weeks in a row off since '94 when I was unemployed for a few months."
"That is impressive, but now we must tell you the extremely sad tale of the upcoming Project (Code named Azuma for the curious). It'll be fun and rewarding. We only need you as business reference and consulting as needed. Obviously at the end we'll use you for full-day stretches of use acceptance testing for about two weeks in December. So we're very sorry but you can't have time off in December."
"Fine. I'll take one week, plus the mandatory shut down week, giving you the two weeks in between, and I'll take the two weeks at the end of January, since everything will be running smoothly by then. At least according the the project data sheets."
We have a hearty handshake and I take a codeine to relieve the pain of my gritted teeth.
Along comes October...
"Guess what, the Project is pushing to January. We'll need you exclusively for the whole month."
"Bite me. You stole December and you can't have January."
"You're absolutely critical to the success of the Project. Can't you push out your time off?"
"No. But it's not so bad as all that. I bet you'll push again and it'll land on whatever new time slot I would have picked."
"Please?"
"No. You got two weeks in December and a two week window in January. Use them wisely."
Along comes December...
"Here's how we re-designed your entire job flow from beginning to end! Isn't it neat?"
"How interesting. Did you mean to allow, for example, this horrible end result that conflicts with all our business rules?"
"We can fix that. Just come up with all the formulas in Excel by tomorrow and we can have the programmers in Germany try to implement it. Otherwise it has to stand as is."
The Next Day...
"Here you go. A simple, elegant series of simple processes reduced to five formulas in Excel."
"Can you fix the rest of the planning module for us too?"
"Did you even ask what the end users actually wanted or needed in the past three months while you were locking code?"
"No. Why would we do that?"
Today...
"We're going to be extending the Project out another six months. It seems all of our business partners rebelled, banded together and staged a boycott until we can prove we actually care about their workload and the value of the completed Project."
