I'm surprised no one answers thruthfully on this. It looks like everyone wants to appear like they use every technique under the sun and still deliver in time. In my opinion, these methods all cost time and are quite a bore. To top it off, most projects don't require that kind of quality at all.
Oracle's Technical Consulting branch does this too, sort of: you can't go and work at any clients you've been to at the past year. I was green back then, signed it and wasn't happy at all, but when I left, it didn't affect me.
I suggest your friends just sign, but strike out the clauses that don't suit them. Put a signature left of the striked-out clauses for good measure, put them in the in-tray and you're done. If they complain, say you've done all you can. If they keep complaining, quietly look for other work.
Don't make requirements anyway. Demand that they organize and create use cases and make them code the whole thing from there.
If that's not possible, let a web designing agency do screen layouts. Then demand they only talk to the agency. Web designers are easy to talk with; they don't bother with stupid details. Actually, they don't bother with anything but the screen layouts.
If you really must create requirements, create documents in PowerPoint. Make high-level, short and non-descriptive requirements. It's quite easy to design a system when you're in orbit instead of both feet on the ground.
If you haven't driven the project into the ground, create documents in Word. Word offers fantastic opportunities! Use track changes, nested tables, extremely large tables, bizarre macros, hidden notes/comments, etc.
Wait with submitting for review until you have a nice stack of documents. It's so much more economic (for you).
Do NOT refer to any other requirements. Just copy/paste and then make small changes.
Require prototypes in VB. Later, you can ask them what's taking them so long.
They want to MoSCoW your requirements. Conduct several meetings on hot, sweaty days and slowly but surely make them understand that each and every requirement is a must-have.
Make it difficult to let them get the latest requirement. Make it easy to get confused with old versions.
Make circular requirements. But don't make it too obvious: make a chain of, say, 10-20 requirements and only THEN refer back to the first one.
Make the versioning consistent with the 'Naked Gun' movies: 1, 2, 2-and-a-half, etc.
Never uniquely identify requirements! That way, it's too easy for analists and developers to refer and to maintain them.
Make sub-requirements that are sometimes numbered, sometimes with characters, and just for the hell of it, drop in some bullets, too! NEVER, EVER make it possible to sort the requirements in any way. Make sure to use the auto-numbering in Word, but sometimes just type them in yourself!
123. This is a major requirement.
123.1. This is a minor.
123.01A.1. Please refer to 782.5.1¾.1A.
Hide major requirements in a very deep nesting:
123.5.1.A. This is a MAJOR requirement.
Requirements should contradict each other, but not too obvious:
78.a7.A. A history should be kept for all items. Never should any item be
permanently deleted.
... skip a version and 300 pages...
342.8. Wullywuz must always be permanently deleted.
Make sure it's hard to reach you. Go live in another country. A different timezone is even better! Convince your boss to outsource to an offshore company, which is easy, since it's all the hype these days.
Include database tables in your requirements.
When the project has already started, make major changes. But first talk your boss into thinking that the system without that particular change is basically worthless.
Nope... they said they made the offer when the old retirement plan was still in place... I said they would've known that the new (not so good) one was starting, and they basically didn't give me an answer. And well, at the time the company was getting into financial heavy weather. Little things like my complaint weren't important at all. I went looking around and moved on to a very appealing job, and left it at that. I talked with my gf about the situation, and we decided I could use my energy better than fighting the Man.
You: "I notice that you have not offered me $PERK, where $PERK is an unsigned integer variable, 4 bytes long, automatically allocated on the stack.
HR: "?? WTF ??"
And when you've deftly negotiated that salary, be sure to check our first payroll!
At one job, I had on paper that huge payments were made in a retirement fund. After nine months, I figured out this wasn't the case at all. When I confronted management about this, they just said "it was a mistake, it was the old retirement plan. And we will generously offer our apologies". And then got angry and said: "you should've said earlier".
I totally agree with the sentiment, but that's the real world. Everyone tries to force your standards onto you, your uni, your employer, your government, etc. I'm just a lonely Linux user trying to find a way to get what I want.
You don't have the time to check mail in a webbased client, but it's no problem to leave a standard client running?
I find that somewhat funny. I think the real problem is that you hate it that they force a way of working onto you, which as an added benefit runs on the Evil Empire's platform.
My solution would be to run a virtual machine at home using VMWare, Xen or something. At the Uni, there will be enough Windows boxes available.
and in this case it's the idiot sysadmins who weren't doing their job.
Everyone including you is blaming sysadmins. Don't forget there's a PHB somewhere within CNN who is definitely ultimately responsible and might be the cause.
Re:Artificial intelligence and intellectual proper
on
Marvin Minsky On AI
·
· Score: 1
I also suspect that true AIs would not really want to do anything.
When spoken to, it will reply: "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script."
'scuse me? I'd rather have a cyclist listen to an audiobook than a driver making a hands-free phonecall. Also, I live in a country where there are separate lanes for cyclists. Keep the volume low and the eyes open.
I used to be really excited about this technology, thinking I could bring a bunch of books and articles in my pocket and read them whenever I needed to wait.
Then I discovered audiobooks. Just put them on your MP3/Ogg player and listen to them everywhere where you need your eyes but not your ears -- in the car, on your bike, cleaning the kitchen, et cetera. I'm working my way through the entire 20 piece science fiction/fantasy book series of Pern, written by Anne McCaffrey. Absolutely great.
We looked for those developers who had submitted 50 or more patches [...] We needed to draw a line somewhere, so when we first began, we searched for long-standing and key contributors to the project. [...] Asa and I then cross-referenced those results [...]
Goddamn bastards GET BACK TO CODING!! Precioussss Firefoxxxx....
(just kidding...)
While you might find it a bad Ask Slashdot, I for myself am pretty interested in seeing any sensible replies. That is, more sensible than the obligatory "bad question blah blah".
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised no one answers thruthfully on this. It looks like everyone wants to appear like they use every technique under the sun and still deliver in time. In my opinion, these methods all cost time and are quite a bore. To top it off, most projects don't require that kind of quality at all.
Heh. Am I the only Perl hacker here who glossed over the S in C-SPAN and just read CPAN?
Oracle's Technical Consulting branch does this too, sort of: you can't go and work at any clients you've been to at the past year. I was green back then, signed it and wasn't happy at all, but when I left, it didn't affect me.
I suggest your friends just sign, but strike out the clauses that don't suit them. Put a signature left of the striked-out clauses for good measure, put them in the in-tray and you're done. If they complain, say you've done all you can. If they keep complaining, quietly look for other work.
123. This is a major requirement.
123.1. This is a minor.
123.01A.1. Please refer to 782.5.1¾.1A.
123.5.1.A. This is a MAJOR requirement.
78.a7.A. A history should be kept for all items. Never should any item be permanently deleted.
342.8. Wullywuz must always be permanently deleted.
Nope... they said they made the offer when the old retirement plan was still in place... I said they would've known that the new (not so good) one was starting, and they basically didn't give me an answer. And well, at the time the company was getting into financial heavy weather. Little things like my complaint weren't important at all. I went looking around and moved on to a very appealing job, and left it at that. I talked with my gf about the situation, and we decided I could use my energy better than fighting the Man.
You: "I notice that you have not offered me $PERK, where $PERK is an unsigned integer variable, 4 bytes long, automatically allocated on the stack.
HR: "?? WTF ??"
And when you've deftly negotiated that salary, be sure to check our first payroll!
At one job, I had on paper that huge payments were made in a retirement fund. After nine months, I figured out this wasn't the case at all. When I confronted management about this, they just said "it was a mistake, it was the old retirement plan. And we will generously offer our apologies". And then got angry and said: "you should've said earlier".
I totally agree with the sentiment, but that's the real world. Everyone tries to force your standards onto you, your uni, your employer, your government, etc. I'm just a lonely Linux user trying to find a way to get what I want.
*ducks*
You don't have the time to check mail in a webbased client, but it's no problem to leave a standard client running?
I find that somewhat funny. I think the real problem is that you hate it that they force a way of working onto you, which as an added benefit runs on the Evil Empire's platform.
My solution would be to run a virtual machine at home using VMWare, Xen or something. At the Uni, there will be enough Windows boxes available.
What's pretty cool is that such small cases can be easily fastened at the back of an LCD screen.
Create a virtual machine and run IE7 in it.
Yeah and I like "talking book" by Steve Wonder :-)
Check out some podcasts... search for php|architect's Pro PHP podcast, IT Conversations, Open Source conversations.
Send me an e-mail at slashdot@vankuik.nl
'scuse me? I'd rather have a cyclist listen to an audiobook than a driver making a hands-free phonecall. Also, I live in a country where there are separate lanes for cyclists. Keep the volume low and the eyes open.
I used to be really excited about this technology, thinking I could bring a bunch of books and articles in my pocket and read them whenever I needed to wait.
Then I discovered audiobooks. Just put them on your MP3/Ogg player and listen to them everywhere where you need your eyes but not your ears -- in the car, on your bike, cleaning the kitchen, et cetera. I'm working my way through the entire 20 piece science fiction/fantasy book series of Pern, written by Anne McCaffrey. Absolutely great.
Not being a native English speaker, I guess boondoggle is a new spell from Harry Potter?
While you might find it a bad Ask Slashdot, I for myself am pretty interested in seeing any sensible replies. That is, more sensible than the obligatory "bad question blah blah".