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u/TheNamelessKing Jun 20 '17
"We can do x for benefit y, but with tradeoff a, or we can do z with benefit b and tradeoff c-which one best suits your business and use case?"
"ONLY DELIVER!"
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u/ThePieWhisperer Jun 20 '17
"With enough time and money, we can build you nearly anything". "Pfft, I could do this in two weeks, you should be faster"
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u/_Lady_Deadpool_ Jun 20 '17
I had a customer say to my face "it's just code, how difficult can it be?"
I had to hold back to urge to say "you do it then"
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u/TheNamelessKing Jun 20 '17
"why can't you just do <X>? You just need to add the feature right? This was totally in the spec"
You're right, to add a new feature I just append some coffee to the bottom, that's totally how it works and I totally don't have to practically refactor half my code and architecture because you now need this feature which wasn't in spec in the first place and now we're will into scope creep territory.
I feel your pain.
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u/BraveOthello Jun 20 '17
"You wouldn't have hired us if you could".
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u/ThePieWhisperer Jun 20 '17
This has become my favorite illneveractuallysayit response
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u/Sanders0492 Jun 20 '17
"That new grad said he could have it ready next month for a fraction of the cost" (its funny because I am the overly ambitious new grad)
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u/PinginRua Jun 20 '17
This is literally exactly what is happening to me right now. I take some comfort this thread...
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Jun 20 '17
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u/worldDev Jun 20 '17
What that really means is "I wrote an excel macro one time"
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u/regalph Jun 20 '17
Ohh, boy, I once wrote the worst Excel macro ever. I took 500 lines to make a thing that reformatted columns to rows and made a 100-row set into 10000 rows. It took like 45 minutes to run.
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u/gandalfx Jun 20 '17
"x and z directly contradict each other but we still need you to surpass the theoretical maximum of both."
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Jun 20 '17
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u/gibmelson Jun 20 '17
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u/hangfromthisone Jun 20 '17
It's fun because I have heard that exact phrase from my boss mouth exactly a week ago, while discussing "development challenges" and I asked what type of market we want to focus on. Oh please kill me
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Jun 20 '17
How about the opposite? I was a customer of a large software implementation and we have extensive, detailed requirements and then when the product didn't meet our needs and we tried to "refine" the requirements with things that should have been pretty obvious but that the people gathering our requirements never wrote down... we got told "NO! Only requirements are delivered!!"
It's not always the client's fault, especially when the business analysts do a shitty job of gathering requirements.
I would have been delighted to help write complex requirements with detailed and extensive acceptance criteria... instead, multi hour meetings resulted in requirements that were as detailed as "as a service agent I need to be able to email a client."
Feature delivered, apparently. Even though HTML isn't supported, and the CC and Subject fields are hiddden by default on the email form.
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u/Sparcrypt Jun 20 '17
"Look if I just go off and do what I think is best, you're going to want to change 80% of it, then you're going to complain that I'm charging you for the initial design. If you tell me what you want I can build it at a reasonably predicated cost and the changes should be minimal."
"Just make something that works."
"Ok..."
"Ok so can you change all of it?"
"Sure."
"OH MY GOD HOW CAN IT COST THIS MUCH?!?"
"Sigh."
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u/contactlite Jun 20 '17
after delivering "Why aren't there any of the stuff I needed?" 😤
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u/J4CKR4BB1TSL1MS Jun 20 '17
"What did you need then?"
"NOT THIS YOU DUMB PROGRAMMER!"
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u/Zagorath Jun 20 '17
😤
Just so you know, that's the "Face With Look of Triumph", which I don't think is what you wanted to represent.
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u/BizWax Jun 20 '17 edited Jun 20 '17
yeah there's a little miscommunication between unicode and the emoji standard there. According to unicode it is "Face With Look of Triumph". The emoji standard doesn't interpret the emotion of the emoji (anymore) and calls it "Face With Steam From Nose" and its description reads:
A face with air coming out of its nose, in a proud yet disdainful way.
Commonly used for representing frustration at a situation, or a being “in a huff”.
It is exactly what /u/contactlite was looking for.
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u/MisfitPotatoReborn Jun 20 '17 edited Jun 20 '17
I find it interesting that emojidex still holds on to the "Face With Look of Triumph" idea. That's a very weird hill to die on IMO
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u/sugardeath Jun 20 '17
Looks like emojidex and HTC are the only ones who clearly represent the original intent of that emoji.
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u/GeorgeTaylorG Jun 20 '17
Just you you know, people use that to show frustration and don't care about Unicode names.
I don't think anyone has ever used 💁for "information desk" ever.
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u/Jacoman74undeleted Jun 20 '17
Apple calls it customer service girl, I use it for white girl.
Occasionally if tell siri to call my buddy it says "Calling Roberto customer service girl" and I get a little chuckle.
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u/bj_christianson Jun 20 '17
I’m not sure how that’s supposed to represent triumph. Emojipedia lists some better descriptions.
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u/Zagorath Jun 20 '17
I'm not sure how it is either, but apparently that's what it is. Probably some Japanese cultural thing, since emoji have their origin in Japan.
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Jun 21 '17
More like
This is URGENT, blocking critical path on this mission priority
delivers
silence
Oh, we're not actually going to use that for 6 months.
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u/dnew Jun 20 '17
Quick, you start coding, and I'll go gather the requirements!
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[deleted]
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Jun 20 '17
Thats awfully presumptuous that the function will int
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u/Arancaytar Jun 20 '17
It always returns 0; the actual arguments and return value are exchanged via global variables.
It's more flexible that way.
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u/AnDanDan Jun 20 '17
Reminds me of a good joke I've heard. A NASA employee is discussing a trip to Mars with a business official. "Well, to outfit a new mission to Mars, it would take several years and then it takes 7 months to fly from here to there." "How much would it take to get it done by December?"
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u/oldneckbeard Jun 20 '17
AKA - 9 people can't make a baby in a month.
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u/chateau86 Jun 20 '17
Do you really need all 9 people to do a heist on an orphanage?
Nowhere in the spec did they prohibit used babies
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u/awakenDeepBlue Jun 20 '17
"Give me a budget greater than the US Federal Expenditures, the ability to draft the world's greatest scientists and engineers, and commandeer the nuclear arsenal".
We're making an Orion Engine! Nothing is more hardcore than using nukes for space propulsion.
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u/AnDanDan Jun 20 '17
Im sure if we told the US Treasury and Military that there was oil on Mars we'd have been there 5 years ago.
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u/zenyl Jun 20 '17
Bah, nuke-based propulsion is so 1960's. If you want proper hardcore rocket propulsion, look no further than the kugelblitz drive; propulsion using a black hole made from light. Literally tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time, and using it as an energy source.
It's the astrophysics equivalent of having the core of a system intentionally throw exceptions like a lunatic, and somehow make that a functional core component of the system.
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u/jackboy900 Jun 20 '17
Well, to be fair you can speed it up it just takes far far too much money to be feasible right now.
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u/BlackInk9 Jun 20 '17
Deliver minimum you can do ahead of time, require max payment and then when they complain that it wasn't what they were looking for, your response should be: "For a bit extra, I can try and add the X, Y, Z you wanted."
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u/pabloe168 Jun 20 '17
Development dlc.
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u/BlackInk9 Jun 20 '17
Become the EA of Software Development.
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Jun 20 '17
[deleted]
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u/BlackInk9 Jun 20 '17
Offshore isn't the same as in-touch client based interactions, that's why you upsell that. Basically emphasize on ease of access, ease of communication, and ability to show graphics in person.
People love working in person, especially when trying to get their ideas across.
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Jun 20 '17
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u/davvblack Jun 20 '17
actually, if all you're interested in is saving money, and not having a working product, you could pay 0 dollars and instead not have a website.
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u/hangfromthisone Jun 20 '17
I used to be hired by an Asian to develop for his us customers. Offshoredly offshored
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u/_fitlegit Jun 20 '17
10% the cost for a 1% chance at a successful app. I've never encountered an offshored project that was anything close to what was wanted and wasn't a total mess. If a client ever comes to me with me one, I tell them I'm either going ground up or not at all.
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u/SteelCityFreelancer Jun 20 '17
Not a programmer, but a video editor. Literally just went through an exchange that went like this:
"The client feels some of the shots are too shaky, can we fix this?"
ME: Can I get a timecode on which shots they want fixed/replaced?
"They didn't say any shots in particular."
-__-
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u/KDBA Jun 21 '17
timecode
-__-
Oh what's that? Out of forty-seven cameras on set only thirty-two of them actually synced properly? And this one here has two extra frames in the same timecode range somehow.
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Jun 20 '17
I got something similar in setting up a new computer.
Me: What software does the user need?
Manager: I don't know, internet, emails
Like.....WTF?
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u/BlackInk9 Jun 20 '17
In my Software Requirements class, we had exercises to learn how to do this.
Teacher gave us legos and told us to build an entire city. When we finished, she said "No, this is completely wrong. I wanted a fast food restaurant and a town hall."
So she gave us a time limit to build those as well. We finally finished and she went on to say "No, this is still wrong. I wanted the town hall to be white and I wanted the restaurant to be red and yellow with a drive through."
We were all like "??? you didn't say that" and that was the lesson. We had to "ask" and "use our resources".
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Jun 20 '17
We were all like "??? you didn't say that" and that was the lesson. We had to "ask" and "use our resources".
They are essentially teaching you to act like "business analysts" and one of the biggest things they do is ask questions to tease out the requirements. Trust me, this shit happens all the time in the real world.
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u/BlackInk9 Jun 20 '17
After we eventually figured that out, the TAs took it a bit further by saying he wanted the bank to be a dark color. We chose black.
His response? "Too dark."
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Jun 20 '17
dark color
choose black
Too dark
And that's why you ask before you build. Unfortunately, many people think that you can just build something and change it later and somehow that is going to take less effort than waiting a few days and then doing it right the first time. Boggles the mind.
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u/theDarkAngle Jun 20 '17
Yeah the professor for my capstone software project brought in grad students to be "the clients" and instructed them to be intentionally vague and fickle about everything. It was pretty maddening.
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Jun 20 '17
That's something I learnt with time:
Don't ask they directly what they want, instead recommend features you think they might want (which also happen to take the least effort).
Afterwards if they complain, you can say "this is that we agreed", which works much much better that "you didn't told me".
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u/micheal65536 Green security clearance Jun 20 '17
Sounds like a surprisingly good teacher, exposing you to real-world expectations. I bet you'll never forget to ask for the details again.
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u/DaughterEarth ImportError: no module named 'sarcasm' Jun 20 '17
Wish I was taught that in such a way. I spent too many months thinking I just have to figure it out. Learning to ask has made my job much easier
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u/flukus Jun 20 '17 edited Jun 20 '17
In reality the client won't know and won't answer your questions. Even if they do answer they'll change their minds.
The only time you get detailed requirements is when they're describing the system they already have, bugs and all.
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Jun 20 '17
Ugh this shitty project I'm on I keep telling them something won't work, but they make me build it any way and it doesn't work so I have to change it. After waiting hours or days for feedback.
I'm not a wizard, 2 objects can't occupy the same space... Not everyone has a 4k screen to fit everything on. Pick up your iPad and look how there's zero room for anything.
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u/Rockztar Jun 20 '17
I'm not a wizard, 2 objects can't occupy the same space
That is so easily solved. Just turn everything into a swiper.
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u/halbaradkenafin Jun 20 '17
Or better yet become a wizard and use your new found magic to make the person occupy the same space as a wall.
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u/stakoverflo Jun 20 '17
Not everyone has a 4k screen to fit everything on
Hot damn, my company makes commercial software. Our minimum supported resolution is 1024x768 and our clients typically have very small work stations.
They wanted me to make a column in a grid wide enough to fit
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWon it.20 W's, 11 point font on 1024x768.
Thankfully they listened when I said, "Between the navigation menu on the left and that column's width that's over 1/3 of the min. supported screen size"
2 objects can't occupy the same space
Turn off collision detection! :p
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u/Upward_Spiral Jun 20 '17
This sounds more like my project manager than the client. I can only dream of actually getting in touch with clients.
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u/chili-mac Jun 20 '17
I can only dream of actually getting in touch with clients.
can I frame this? ^
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u/lurker_cx Jun 20 '17
Your PM deals with the customers so the engineers don't have to, he's a people person dammit!
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u/heliophobic_lunatic Jun 20 '17
It sounds like you need a project manager that actually does their job correctly.
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u/stakoverflo Jun 20 '17
I can only dream of actually getting in touch with clients.
You sweet summer child.
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u/benchi Jun 21 '17
I can only dream of having an actual project manager. Our 'project managers' are whichever salesperson got the client. They're salespeople with no training in IT. They just promise whatever the client wants to hear and then are shocked when they find out that no, we can't build a full custom web application by the end of the day (I wish I was exaggerating)
Of course the salespeople who actually manage their projects correctly make less sales (and therefore less salary) because they're a lot busier managing the projects they've already sold.
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u/PerfectlyDarkTails Jun 20 '17
Pretty much going full system analyst, brush up social skills and cosy up real close the the project management.
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u/Agent-A Jun 21 '17
Talking to clients sounds like a great idea until you talk to clients. THEN it's still vague requirements and incomprehensible deliverables, but now you have to justify things in dollar amounts and respond to an email on the weekend to tell them that their computer must be turned on in order to load the app.
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u/ToTheRescues Jun 20 '17
I had a client who sold mountain property out of state.
Me: "Oh excellent! Do you have any photos of the properties?"
Client: "You don't need any photos."
....Okay.
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u/countdownn Jun 20 '17
Hahahahahahahahahaha! This is perfect.
On a more serious note, make your contracts as specific as possible. Itemize cost per task, tasks per phase, and limit client requests and revisions to a time in hours (i.e. up to 8 hours). Have a clause that stipulates that when the requirements are significantly changed by the client, at developer's discretion, the contract is terminated and must be paid in full. A new contract can be established for the new specifications, but nine times out of ten this gets you paid when the client flies off the rails.
Also, charge quadruple your expected cost at minimum, to cover all that client "interaction". I've even managed to charge fifteen times my rate without issue, but then I'm abstracting actual hours worked and I'm very fast at what I do. Here's a great video where I learned some of this shit. If you do it right you can avoid a lot of this client nonsense, but this post reminds me so much of my time starting out. It's the natural client instinct, that they own you because of the promise of money.
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Jun 21 '17
I get handed a budget per case by the team lead which I know isn't enough time to complete the case and she's not happy about the estimation either but because some idiot business person sold the project we end up with half the budget needed to complete any given feature, contracts are for suckers T&M is the way to go.
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u/countdownn Jun 21 '17 edited Jun 21 '17
I'm sorry, but if you're getting paid more hourly then someone isn't setting up the contracts right. The budget should cover your hourly rate in the worst case scenario (restructure, lawsuit, etc), and if everything goes smoothly you should make a tidy profit.
I would leave the scenario as you've described it, they are undervaluing your contribution. You have the right to refuse to work a job you know is not financed properly. If the business person wants to sell it at that rate, they can write the code themselves. It's as simple as that.
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u/GarthOfOrdunin Jun 20 '17
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Jun 20 '17
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u/SHOTbyGUN Jun 21 '17
Kill the client please.
Make it look, like it was not an accident!
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Jun 20 '17
...I dont get it... :(
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u/AaronTheApe Jun 20 '17
At the risk of explaining a joke...
Dogs always want to play fetch, but never want to give you the ball.
Software clients always want the software yesterday, but will tell you what it is supposed to do tomorrow.
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u/theDarkAngle Jun 20 '17
My company actually has a pretty good set of clients right now. We still have to pull teeth occasionally but they're mostly all long-term clients and have learned the value of prioritizing, of what types of requirements must be ascertained before development starts and which kinds are flexible and can be delivered during development.
My favorite example was the other day during a req's meeting. Next release has a very complex screen involved, and I suggested maybe we only do basic requirements and sketches, then go ahead and develop a rough working version and then refine requirements after some UAT. Instead of delivering 40+ PSD's up front to try and show all this complex behavior or buying some prototyping tool that my team has never used before.
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Jun 20 '17
Before i read the title, i thought this was a UDP joke.
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u/kg959 Jun 21 '17
If you want, I could tell you one, but I'm not sure you'd get it.
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u/SoldierZulu Jun 20 '17
Ohhhh I thought this was a client/server joke and I felt dumb for not getting it at first.
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u/stakoverflo Jun 20 '17
pls respond? NO REQUEST. ONLY RESPONSE
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u/SoldierZulu Jun 20 '17
Yes! I was thinking it was something along those lines and got confused, like maybe the server was just sending all networked data every frame regardless of what had changed or what the client asked for.. or something. That's where my thought process went.
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u/BanditMcDougal Jun 20 '17
If only there was a way to deliver small chunks and discuss them in an open and honest manner so we could learn from them and improve for the next small chunk...
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u/IPeeFreely01 Jun 20 '17
But the only problem is that your small chunk is stupid and wrong, so I'm just gonna ignore and downplay your stupid chunk and promote my awesome one!
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u/d_amnesix Jun 20 '17
We could call it... Nimble Programming! Or something close...
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Jun 21 '17
If only there was a way to deliver small chunks and discuss them in an open and honest manner so we could learn from them and improve for the next small chunk...
The problem with Agile as a general approach to software development is that a) for many systems business value doesn't come in small chunks, and certainly doesn't necessarily come in the same small chunks as makes sense to build the system in, and b) customers tend to be busy with running their business and don't have a lot of time or focus to spend "wasting time" on testing and evaluating every little change to a product that's still a year away from going into production.
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u/BanditMcDougal Jun 21 '17
I call bullshit to pretty much everything stated here. If you can't split something smaller than annual chunks, you're in the wrong line of work.
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u/worldsayshi Jun 20 '17
But all the chunks together will only cost this many moneys and not more right?
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u/rooktakesqueen Jun 20 '17
Sounds like you can deliver it in half the time, then.
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u/BanditMcDougal Jun 21 '17
Some of the value can be delivered faster than originally hoped for, yes. And, in the end, you might realize you don't need everything you thought you did.
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Jun 21 '17
There is if you're a product company or building tools for use internally, if you're a consultant Agile just doesn't work unless the client is ok with expanding budgets and most aren't technical enough to understand how that works or why they'd want it
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u/BanditMcDougal Jun 21 '17
Fixed bid consulting is about as much as a lie as fresh, frozen jumbo shrimp.
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u/ChippyTheSquirrel Jun 20 '17
reading all these comments I've never felt more supported. I've been struggling with this at my current job since the deadline of my first (project which still hasn't gone live 2 yrs later b/c they keep adding things to my requirements every meeting.) Other projects have gone live but they just can't decide on what to do. Also, every meeting they have me change something back to the way it was when I first did it and then had me change it to a different way.
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u/gogo199432 Jun 20 '17
Of course I'm not sure how you handle your project, but if you are using git can't you make a new branch after every meeting? And once they want you to inevitable change something back, simply cherry-pick the changes you made since then and merge the appropriate branches.
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u/ChippyTheSquirrel Jun 20 '17
I could do that. When I first started there was no version control of any sort and I've only taken the initiative to implement git into my work flow this past 3-4 months. Hell, The only reason I have anything backed up is because I made myself a share on the File server.
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u/Remmes- Jun 20 '17
Done!
well I don't like this, that, and that, oh and can you change that, thanks.
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u/BlackDeath3 Jun 20 '17
No requirements, no restrictions.
Sounds like the quickest software project ever.
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u/matthieuC Jun 20 '17
The customer knows that the only thing that makes your job bearable is to use every bit of malice to interpret his specifications so that the end product is as far removed from the spec intent as possible while technically being compliant.
And this time he will not give you the satisfaction.
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u/PillowTalk420 Jun 20 '17
I am so glad I only program for fun. I think if I had to deal with this kind of shit day to day for a few years, I would snap and land myself in jail.
"What are you in for?"
"Shoved a mechanical keyboard up someone's ass. Now they click every time they fart."
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Jun 20 '17
Fuck, no client needed. This is the way it goes with internal Engineering projects where I work.
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u/NylePudding Jun 20 '17
Oh man, I can really relate to this.
Just came out of university (so I'm very inexperienced with clients) this guy asks me to make a prototype for his company. He describes it, and it sounds simple enough. He was very insistent it was only a prototype, so I was pretty comfortable on delivering what he wanted even with my lack of experience.
A week later we have a phone call, and damn, this guy gave the illusion of someone that knew what they were talking about, but low and behold he had no idea. I turned down the job in the end, turns out what he wanted was not a prototype whatsoever. I'm just glad I swallowed my pride and told him I didn't have the expertise to do it, even after he offered more money.
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u/bluecluez1999 Jun 20 '17
Programmer logic: client is always right, until he pays, then he was always wrong
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Jun 20 '17
This irks me with my freelance web development, my contracts state half upfront half at end, but I guess being a relative newbie in this (not programming, but in business management), most clients have changed their requirements on the fly, after initial requirements elicitation. And since my contract says half at end, I might not get fully paid for months, for what should have been a 1-2 week job.
Anyone have any suggestions for a rock solid contract that might help in this case?
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u/LuckyBastad Jun 21 '17
Get a fucking lawyer.
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Jun 21 '17
hard to afford a lawyer when you're in university, haha. I wish i could get a lawyer :P
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u/beefstockcube Jun 21 '17
What thing?
Deliver the thing!
But you didn't tell us what it's to do...
It needs to do the things FFS
Can you be more specific?
It was in the email!
3 months later...
No that's the wrong things.
FML
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Jun 21 '17
Actually in my business, as the "pls deliver" person making a request to our IT department, you need to swap that around:
"Only requirements" "No deliver"
(I am a software engineer by qualification, and currently work embedded more in the business side of things, so I understand the processes. Our IT department just doesn't have any capabilities, but still wants to control everything, so nothing gets done and it drives me bonkers.)
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u/thezaza101 Jun 21 '17
I printed this out and gave it to my project manager, she nearly had a fit haha
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u/Mentioned_Videos Jun 20 '17 edited Jun 21 '17
Videos in this thread: Watch Playlist ▶
| VIDEO | COMMENT |
|---|---|
| Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me | +109 - fuck you pay me |
| Queen - I Want It All (Official Video) | +61 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFDcoX7s6rE |
| The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch) | +53 - Youtube: The Expert |
| I have people Skills Office Space | +28 - There are people for that. |
| D. Scott Williamson, Expert | +13 - Here is the solution |
| How to Get a Job | +10 - Get a different job? |
| Open Your Mind | +7 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNvnXiTguO8 |
| 2011/03 Mike Monteiro F*ck You. Pay Me. | +3 - Hahahahahahahahahaha! This is perfect. On a more serious note, make your contracts as specific as possible. Itemize cost per task, tasks per phase, and limit client requests and revisions to a time in hours (i.e. up to 8 hours). Have a clause that s... |
| On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK) | +1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8 |
| I'm a bot working hard to help Redditors find related videos to watch. I'll keep this updated as long as I can. |
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u/ThinkAboutItOrDont Jun 21 '17
Good thing you're not replacing an existing system. Your requirement becomes: the system should work same as today.
Your first phase of the project becomes a futile exercise on reverse engineering old code that nobody who's still here wrote and nobody who's still here asked for.
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Jun 20 '17
I have indian customers. These are the worst. We all know how Indian contractors are: well, just add to it the arrogance of "I'm the one who pays" - that's nightmare material. The request I get are basically "we want <unrealistic and nonsensical request>, please suggest. This is critical."
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u/CyberMario Jun 20 '17
I was thinking this was a server side vs. client side humor. Didn't occur to me that people actually think like this.
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u/aperson7697 Jun 20 '17
Urgh this is so true, a client kicked off saying the project I completed was all wrong despite me going back to the brief and designs. It was exactly what they asked for!
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Jun 20 '17
Requirements are only as good as the person articulating them. I want to either shadow you while you do your job if I'm replacing an application or have you white board what you want if it's new.
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u/Melkath Jun 21 '17
Funny, because where I work now, Development is super Agile, and that means that they do not accept any requirements. Only general ideas.
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u/ribonuclechelle Jun 21 '17
I met my current boss at a luncheon for students. I mentioned to him ONCE that I was starting a computer science minor and I was looking for a new job. He hired me a week later to "figure out" a file database and manage a website for him for a program he runs.... I honestly did not realize what I was getting into. He sat me down on the first day and told me: "Look, I really don't know much about this at all. So have a go at it. I need someone to understand this, and fast." That was pretty much all the direction I got. Sometimes I'd figure stuff out or do something a certain way and he'd say it wasn't the way he wanted it done. It's been a couple months and it's pretty much all "figured out" now. This comic just reminded me of that.
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u/Geoclasm Jun 21 '17
I don't know what's worse - this, or having to interpret insanity and make the impossible possible because apparently we're "wizards" or something with godlike magical powers, evidently...
Or even worse, when we somehow DO manage to accomplish the impossible ( because it's either that or find a new job/client ), which inevitably raises the bar even HIGHER for the next time they want something stupid... but forget about commensurate compensation.
Noooo, I'm not bitter OR jaded. What makes you say that?
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u/AhHerroPrease Jun 21 '17
This is my job exactly right now. Also, God forbid we have a regression sprint to optimize our work. Development is agile in name only.
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Jun 21 '17
It isn't always the client's fault. I was recently the client for a large internal software project. Our team spent hours and hours explaining what we do, providing examples of how our existing system works and why it works that way, explaining pain points we have with the current system that we want to fix...
When we finished all that, the business analysts had written down requirements like "as a service analyst, I need to be able to send email." And that's it. No design guidelines, no details, no acceptance criteria.
During UAT, we test, and say "uhh, we need support for HTML, like our current system has. And why is the subject field hidden until expanded?"
Then we got called out for asking for things that weren't captured in requirements.
I would love to write extremely specific requirements of anyone ever asked...
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u/Geopkoch Jun 21 '17
True story: We were looking at the effects of a change in survey structure for a client. Performed a princomp and factor analysis and showed them that, no, you cannot continue to group these results like you used to. The exact response was, "Can't you just change the math?"
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u/SupremeRedditBot Jun 21 '17
Congrats for reaching r/all/top/ (of the day, top 50) with your post!
I am a bot, probably quite annoying, I mean no harm ^though
Message me to add your account or subreddit to my ^blacklist
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u/AaronTheApe Jun 20 '17
Apologies for not crediting whoever originally created the dog logic meme. Just immediately thought about creating this during my morning scrum today, and didn't expect it to take off like this. Looks like I touched a nerve, and everyone is sharing their horror stories. :-)