Comic dialog
Wait, the list is single spaced? And how did you get a time estimate for the task 'make the website better'?!
Panel 1
John Smith: Welcome to the company.
Panel 2
John Smith: Here's the list of projects and deadlines.
Thomas Smith: Wow, that's a lot of projects to be done in one month.
Panel 3
Thomas Smith: Well, give me the specs for each of them, and I'll see what I can do.
John Smith: Specs? You don't need no stink'n specs.
Panel 4
Thomas Smith: How can I complete tasks that aren't defined?
John Smith: Oh woes' me. I can't do anything without specs. Wow, you're just as useless as the last guy.
Caption: A flawed system can not be fixed with a change of face.
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Gary
Author Comments aka Comic News
System rant
The concept for today's comic was given to me by a friend. I think it stemmed from a system that doesn't work, as well as they'd like, for what they do. A lot of companies struggle with this, and have similar systems. Time lines and estimates are given before specs are written. Then business feels under the gun to write specs that have pseudo technical solutions in them to a business problem. Since they are not 100% familiar with the technology, and it's not their job, this takes longer, and many times these documents are late. The technology group then gets angry for being given specs with a solution in them they don't agree with, and being given that solution late with out their deadline changing. They feel rushed and under the gun to get something out by this magical date. So the crank something out that's either late or doesn't work, or both, and give it to QA. QA then feels like their left holding the bag as their pressured to meet the deadline with a late or un-working product. Then, once business sees the solution, they aren't happy with it and immediately start opening tickets to change to fix parts of it, normally before it's even in production. This process tends to leave everyone unhappy and feeling bad. There's probably a bit of exaggeration in there, and this isn't 100% of the time, but it does happen, and not just at this company. Many companies fall into this, it's the reason other development processes were developed, each with their own flaws. What's a bit scary is, despite such a flawed system, there are many successes, probably because people have learned how to adapt to this system.
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