What's the best way to explain to management why the project isn't finished on time?



  • So far I've found two possibilities:

    and



  • Here's what will happen:

    1. The first link, they'll see the iceberg, ignore what the picture is trying to tell them, and either demand you work faster or stop you from what your current priority is and try to tackle the stuff at the bottom of the iceberg. You'll have more work and slipping deadlines
    2. The second link, they'll only see that 2-3 is too big of a number, and try using fractions.You might luck out.



  • I've seen the first one several times - the "Iceberg of Service Delivery".

    Second one is quite good, but also demonstrates how lack of research leads to poor decision-making.  It even identifies the person responsible: "I'm not the one who told our friends we'd make it by Sunday in the first place! You're killing me because you made a mistake!"

    I can see management responding to these stories in one of two ways:

    1. you should have been more accurate with your estimations in the first place, and not just given a figure based upon a cursory glance at the project spec
    2. where's your risk management that provides a contingency for these issues?
    Of course, that's assuming that the project is being managed by that individual in question.


  •  Possible answers to the question "why isn't the project finished on time?"

    • the will of God
    • the previous administration
    • sunspots
    • bad karma
    • evil alien frogs from the galaxy Tolakia
    • the project is on time; you just aren't using the new standard calendar


  • The second link is more useful.

    As for the first link, it demonstrates the danger of demoing a GUI to the client before the back-end that drives it is anywhere near-ready. I would hope that most software shops have learned the simple, "if it looks done, it is done" principle that clients go by.

    I think the real problem is that IT people of all stripes, but especially programmers, don't understand the even more basic rule: "the UI is the program". That's why Git, for example, is a piece of shit-- regardless of its technical merits.


  • sekret PM club

    I find it somewhat funny that when I went to the main page of Coding Confessional, I see this:

     

    Sometimes, I don't get what's wrong with some of the code samples on thedailywtf.com



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I think the real problem is that IT people of all stripes, but especially programmers, don't understand the even more basic rule: "the UI is the program". That's why Git, for example, is a piece of shit-- regardless of its technical merits.

    Pretty much this (except the Git bit which I will elaborate in a moment), to end-user anyway. I can understand people wanting to see a prototype, but when doing something that is web-based, never ever will I do anything else for UI than very basic barebones, until the backend can support the functionality.

    As for Git, it's not a piece of shit. It's far better than most other CVS's out there. You think it's bad because it's command line by default? I'd still use it and write my own wrapper to that. But I don't have to. Why? Because there's plethora of wrappers to Git that just take away the need to even give a damn about it being a terminal program.



  • @grinderofl said:

    You think it's bad because it's command line by default?

    No; I think it's bad because it's bad.

    I also think anybody who thinks you can just "write a wrapper" around a shitty CLI program to make a good GUI program is delusional and should be kept far, far away from any software development tasks.

    I also think anybody who thinks "just write a wrapper around the CLI program" in the first place instead of, "just write a GUI that talks to the same underlying library" is an idiot who has no idea how to write quality software.

    I also think hot dogs aren't worth it unless you get those quarter-pound Hebrew National suckers.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @grinderofl said:
    You think it's bad because it's command line by default?

    No; I think it's bad because it's bad.

    I also think anybody who thinks you can just "write a wrapper" around a shitty CLI program to make a good GUI program is delusional and should be kept far, far away from any software development tasks.

    I also think anybody who thinks "just write a wrapper around the CLI program" in the first place instead of, "just write a GUI that talks to the same underlying library" is an idiot who has no idea how to write quality software.

    I also think hot dogs aren't worth it unless you get those quarter-pound Hebrew National suckers.

    I woke up two minutes before I wrote that post, sue me. The word 'command line' got stuck in my head, but the point stays - if you don't like having a CLI interface, write a GUI. But hey - you don't have to, because there's plenty!

    Also, I would really like to hear your thoughts on as to why you think it's bad.



  • I'm going to need some more popcorn.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    I also think hot dogs aren't worth it unless you get those quarter-pound Hebrew National suckers.

    Oscar Meyer used to make quarter pound spicy hot dogs. Those were the best. I think I was the only one buying them, though, because a few years ago they disappeared, and it made me sad. My local grocery store often has buy 1 get 1 free deals on Oscar Meyer cheese dogs, and I've decided that I quite like those. But the hot links were the best. I used to deep fry them. Mmmmm.....



  • @grinderofl said:

    Also, I would really like to hear your thoughts on as to why you think it's bad.

    <diving-in-slow-motion> Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo .......

     



  • @grinderofl said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I think the real problem is that IT people of all stripes, but especially programmers, don't understand the even more basic rule: "the UI is the program".

    I can understand people wanting to see a prototype, but when doing something that is web-based, never ever will I do anything else for UI than very basic barebones, until the backend can support the functionality

    10+ years ago, I would draw mockups by hand, scan them, and put the scans into my design specs. It emphasized the preliminariness [i](well, it [b]should[/b] be a word)[/i] of the UI.

    With the advent of tools like [url="http://balsamiq.com/"]Balsamiq[/url] that can actually provide page-to-page linking so you can get an idea of the UI's flow from the mockups, that sort of thin has gotten a lot easier. Balsmiq in particular is nice because it renders the UI in a way that looks hand-drawn, so people tend to understand that it's just a mockup and not get caught up in pixels and exact functionality.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I also think hot dogs aren't worth it unless you get those quarter-pound Hebrew National suckers.

    I think we've found TRWTF: a pork product with "Hebrew" in its name.



  • @grinderofl said:

    Also, I would really like to hear your thoughts on as to why you think it's bad.
     

    Oh, I guess you haven't been visitng the forum much.

    I hope you're not planning on working or doing anything else today or most of this week, because we're all really looking forward and you have already committed to a nice long blakeyrant with yourself as the second party.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @pjt33 said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I also think hot dogs aren't worth it unless you get those quarter-pound Hebrew National suckers.

    I think we've found TRWTF: a pork product with "Hebrew" in its name.
    They appear to be beef, not pork.



  • @grinderofl said:

    I woke up two minutes before I wrote that post, sue me. The word 'command line' got stuck in my head, but the point stays - if you don't like having a CLI interface, write a GUI. But hey - you don't have to, because there's plenty!

    Also, I would really like to hear your thoughts on as to why you think it's bad.

    Why don't you go back to one of the 17 threads where I've already talked about that. "Git is good" is one of those crazy ideas that idiots keep bringing up over and over, there's plenty of discussion of it on this forum.



  • @pjt33 said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I also think hot dogs aren't worth it unless you get those quarter-pound Hebrew National suckers.

    I think we've found TRWTF: a pork product with "Hebrew" in its name.

    Are you the dumbest man on Earth, or...

    They're BEEF hot dogs, nimrod.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Why don't you go back to one of the 17 threads where I've already talked about that.

    Dude, you brought it up (in a thread that has nothing to do with it), so defend your point of view properly.


    Don't wave someone away to another thread, as though they're boring you, when you started the conversation about in in the first fucking place.

    Because that would be the behaviour of a dosser and a dwad[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfSVkG_-4AU].[/url]



  • I know I had a discussion with Blakeyrat about Git once before... I think he didn't like how it merged/branched, and possibly didn't like the Visual Studio integration?  Memory is fuzzy, but I know I've seen his Git rant before (in fact I think I started it the last time) and from what I recall his points were valid, but I never encountered them when using Git.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @eViLegion said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Why don't you go back to one of the 17 threads where I've already talked about that.

    Dude, you brought it up (in a thread that has nothing to do with it), so defend your point of view properly.

    Obvious troll is obvious. I mean, even for this place.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @eViLegion said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    Why don't you go back to one of the 17 threads where I've already talked about that.

    Dude, you brought it up (in a thread that has nothing to do with it), so defend your point of view properly.

    Obvious troll is obvious. I mean, even for this place.

    Not quite sure who you're saying is an obvious troll?

    If it's me, I was just calling out someone for being a dick, when someone else responds reasonably to a topic the former has raised... and I stand by it.


    If it's blakey, then, I'm not sure its trolling, because he genuinely does seem to hate everything that he doesn't like, rather than just ignoring it like everyone else.



  • @eViLegion said:

    Don't wave someone away to another thread, as though they're boring you, when you started the conversation about in in the first fucking place.

    Jesus. Look, if your little congealed brain is too small to figure it out, go to Google and type in one or more of the following keywords:

    "dailywtf", "blakeyrat", "git", "terrible", "marmalade", "github", "broken", "usability", "banana".

    Look the magical Internet fairy delivers unto you the previous threads as if by magic!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @eViLegion said:
    Don't wave someone away to another thread, as though they're boring you, when you started the conversation about in in the first fucking place.

    Jesus. Look, if your little congealed brain is too small to figure it out, go to Google and type in one or more of the following keywords:

    "dailywtf", "blakeyrat", "git", "terrible", "marmalade", "github", "broken", "usability", "banana".

    Look the magical Internet fairy delivers unto you the previous threads as if by magic!

    Perhaps your reading comprehension is a little lackluster, so let me clarify; I wasn't asking you for your torbid views on a tedious subject. I was simply calling you a douchebag for starting a conversation, then attempting to aggressively shutdown someone who requested additional information. However, instead of understanding that, you've simply reiterated your monumental idiocy to me, as though I'm the person trying to engage you in meaningful conversation, and not the person pointing at you and saying "Hey everyone, look at this cunt... what a cunt, eh?"



    So, just to recap again, in case you missed it the first couple of times around: (1) You are a douchebag. (2) I don't care about your shitty opinions. (3) Google cannot make the fact you're a cunt any clearer than you already have.



    Thanks.



  • @eViLegion said:

    torbid
     

    I learnt a fresh lemma!

    @eViLegion said:

    attempting to aggressively shutdown someone who requested additional information.

    Directing someone to a location where such information is available is totally shutting someone down!

     



  • @dhromed said:

    Directing someone to a location where such information is available is totally shutting someone down!

    Its not that I even MIND someone shutting someone else down. Just don't do it when you're the one that brought up the subject in the first place; its fucking retarded to do that.



    If one has gone on, and on, and on about it many times before, maybe one should shut the fuck up about it, rather than bringing it up again and then not even having the common fucking decency to follow through with one's own stupid conversation.



    Additionally, there is a big difference between someone requesting more info apropos of nothing (for which google should be consulted), and replying with "why do you say that?" to someone who has just made a statement ON THE SAME FORUM.



    Finally... regardless of who you are, and what you know, and what you have ever written anywhere, telling someone to google for your own opinion is the mark of a horribly narcissistic arsehole. This isn't even trolling; you gotta be so far up your own arse to think that people should be googling what you thought once, instead of having a conversation with them.



  • One of those "CLI wrapper" tools almost destroyed my system once.

    I needed to resize an NTFS partition. Nothing too complex. I booted up an Ubuntu CD (this was probably around version 10.04), started GParted (which, aside from this problem, is a fantastic tool) and did that. GParted works by a combination of library calls (to resize the partition) and CLI program calls (to resize the filesystem). Turns out the second program (ntfsresize) had been updated to add an "Are you sure you want to continue?" prompt, but GParted didn't know how to handle that, so it failed right after resizing the partition, leaving the disk in an inconsistent state. Thankfully you could fix it just by resizing it back to its previous size.



  • @eViLegion said:

    *stuff*
    Er, not really.  Blakey has talked a lot about Git and how he hates it.  I don't expect him to rehash everything he's said every time he makes a remark using it as an example.

    Reminds me of this video.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    Er, not really. Blakey has talked a lot about Git and how he hates it. I don't expect him to rehash everything he's said every time he makes a remark using it as an example.

    Reminds me of this video.

    Exactly. This is a FORUM, not a chat room. Stuff you post here doesn't disappear (insert obligatory Community Server joke), so you can just go back and read it at any time.

    If it were a chat room, and grinderofl had no way of going back to read my opinions, then yes, I would have been being boone or whatever an asshole. But it isn't so I weresen't or whatever.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    Er, not really.  Blakey has talked a lot about Git and how he hates it.  I don't expect him to rehash everything he's said every time he makes a remark using it as an example.

    Reminds me of this video.

    OK... so, either he should STFU because he's talked about it ad nauseam, and no-one is interested any more, or he should actually respond with an explanation to someone who inquires with genuine interest. Only dickheads start talking about topics then angrily refuse to actually engage in the conversation... well, dickheads and the mentally ill.



    As it happens, I don't expect him to rehash it every time he mentions it, but maybe when people ask him, on the basis that is the normal human behaviour of a conversation.



    Obviously, he doesn't have to rehash it if he doesn't want, but by referring people to Google instead of just continuing the conversation (which he started, remember), he runs the risk (nay, the certainty) that people will treat him as a narcissistic arsehole straight out of the top drawer. As you can see, that is exactly whats happening here.

    @blakeyrat said:

    This is a FORUM, not a chat room. Stuff you post here doesn't disappear (insert obligatory Community Server joke), so you can just go back and read it at any time.

    Hence my point about narcissism. Yes, people can go back and spend some time searching for something that will be archived haphazardly by Google. They can go and do a bunch of work, trawling through all the abject dross to find the tiny bit of opined information that they were briefly interested in slghtly.

    But whats the point in doing that when:

    (1) the person whose opinion it is, is right here on this board all the time, and apparently happy to opine loudly and strongly about pretty much everything.

    (2) you're not actually that interested, and were just asking in order join in and make a bit of conversation.



    The fact that you think people are interested enough in what you think, to back-Google some throw-away bullshit opinion you once had, is WHY you're a narcissistic arsehole.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @eViLegion said:

    Obviously, he doesn't have to rehash it if he doesn't want, but by referring people to Google instead of just continuing the conversation (which he started, remember), he runs the risk (nay, the certainty) that people will treat him as a narcissistic arsehole straight out of the top drawer. As you can see, that is exactly whats happening here.

    blakey is pretty much immune from subtle trolling in the form of direct questions. Though I can understand his fatigue in starting git flamewars. It's actually tough to rant a lot on something you don't understand.



  • I'm gonna STFU now, because I've just remembered that I'm a douchebag for even going on about it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @eViLegion said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @eViLegion said:
    Don't wave someone away to another thread, as though they're boring you, when you started the conversation about in in the first fucking place.

    Jesus. Look, if your little congealed brain is too small to figure it out, go to Google and type in one or more of the following keywords:

    "dailywtf", "blakeyrat", "git", "terrible", "marmalade", "github", "broken", "usability", "banana".

    Look the magical Internet fairy delivers unto you the previous threads as if by magic!

    Perhaps your reading comprehension is a little lackluster, so let me clarify; I wasn't asking you for your torbid views on a tedious subject. I was simply calling you a douchebag for starting a conversation, then attempting to aggressively shutdown someone who requested additional information. However, instead of understanding that, you've simply reiterated your monumental idiocy to me, as though I'm the person trying to engage you in meaningful conversation, and not the person pointing at you and saying "Hey everyone, look at this cunt... what a cunt, eh?"



    So, just to recap again, in case you missed it the first couple of times around: (1) You are a douchebag. (2) I don't care about your shitty opinions. (3) Google cannot make the fact you're a cunt any clearer than you already have.



    Thanks.

    Baloney. You know exactly what you were doing--trying to get Blakey to go off on a rant, and he declined, by referencing searching his previous rants out. So you tried to troll him into it.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @eViLegion said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    @eViLegion said:
    Don't wave someone away to another thread, as though they're boring you, when you started the conversation about in in the first fucking place.

    Jesus. Look, if your little congealed brain is too small to figure it out, go to Google and type in one or more of the following keywords:

    "dailywtf", "blakeyrat", "git", "terrible", "marmalade", "github", "broken", "usability", "banana".

    Look the magical Internet fairy delivers unto you the previous threads as if by magic!

    Perhaps your reading comprehension is a little lackluster, so let me clarify; I wasn't asking you for your torbid views on a tedious subject. I was simply calling you a douchebag for starting a conversation, then attempting to aggressively shutdown someone who requested additional information. However, instead of understanding that, you've simply reiterated your monumental idiocy to me, as though I'm the person trying to engage you in meaningful conversation, and not the person pointing at you and saying "Hey everyone, look at this cunt... what a cunt, eh?"



    So, just to recap again, in case you missed it the first couple of times around: (1) You are a douchebag. (2) I don't care about your shitty opinions. (3) Google cannot make the fact you're a cunt any clearer than you already have.



    Thanks.

    Baloney. You know exactly what you were doing--trying to get Blakey to go off on a rant, and he declined, by referencing searching his previous rants out. So you tried to troll him into it.

    Is this TDWTF or Dr Phil



  • @spamcourt said:

    I needed to resize an NTFS partition. Nothing too complex. I booted up an Ubuntu CD
    Why Ubuntu, did not Windows partmgr work?



  • @da Doctah said:

     Possible answers to the question "why isn't the project finished on time?"

    • the will of God
    • the previous administration
    • sunspots
    • bad karma
    • evil alien frogs from the galaxy Tolakia
    • the project is on time; you just aren't using the new standard calendar
    • Obama

    FTFY



  • @Ben L. said:

    @da Doctah said:

     Possible answers to the question "why isn't the project finished on time?"

    • the will of God
    • the previous administration
    • sunspots
    • bad karma
    • evil alien frogs from the galaxy Tolakia
    • the project is on time; you just aren't using the new standard calendar
    • Obamacare

    FTFY

    FTFTFY

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @da Doctah said:

     Possible answers to the question "why isn't the project finished on time?"

    • the will of God
    • the previous administration
    • sunspots
    • bad karma
    • evil alien frogs from the galaxy Tolakia
    • the project is on time; you just aren't using the new standard calendar
    • Obamacare911*

    FTFY

    FTFTFY

     

    FTFTFTFYFY



    • read the offer in details to see all the stuff that is "bundled" with that thing, it's impressive marketing.


  • @Ronald said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @da Doctah said:

     Possible answers to the question "why isn't the project finished on time?"

    • the will of God
    • the previous administration
    • sunspots
    • bad karma
    • evil alien frogs from the galaxy Tolakia
    • the project is on time; you just aren't using the new standard calendar
    • Obamacare911*

    FTFY

    FTFTFY

     

    FTFTFTFYFY



    • read the offer in details to see all the stuff that is "bundled" with that thing, it's impressive marketing.

    This Obamacare911 thing is even worse than I thought. Here is how it works:


    • You buy the book for the low price of $4.95 (plus $3.95 s&h)
    • You automatically receive FOR FREE the next 2 issues of the monthly "Health radar" newsletter. This really is a trial subscription.
    • You automatically receive FOR FREE the next 3 issues of the monthly "Newsmax" magazine. This also is a trial subscription.
    • For your convenience, your trial subscriptions are set to auto-renew for the low annual price of $36 (newsletter) and $39.95 (magazine). Yes, they not only subscribe you to a newsletter, they make you PAY $3 for each issue.
    • If you understand that this is a scam and try to close the page, a javascript prompt will ask you to consider answering an urgent poll about Obamacare, which leads to a poll that of course requires your email address.


    This makes me reconsider my career choice. I think I should switch to marketing, those people must have a blast finding new ways to scam old fucks.


  • @Ronald said:

    This makes me reconsider my career choice. I think I should switch to marketing, those people must have a blast finding new ways to scam old fucks.

    The senile ones are the best. You can just pretend to be their son and get them to buy anything.

    "Timmy? But.. I thought you died at Khe Sanh on your 20th birthday.."

    "No Dad, I'm back. And I have something for you. How would you like to try a free* home security system? We install it for free, and if you like it, you can keep it for a low monthly price!"

    "Oh God, Timmy.. I can't believe it's really you.." sobs feebly

    "Yeah, okay, just hold the pen.. no, you're getting tears on the sales order.. goddammit, I'll just sign it. Not like you're going to remember next week anyway.."


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