Tag Archives: money

Change always costs money

With Waterfall step-down process, a lot relied on skilled people – skilled analysts to interrogate clients for requirements, skilled project managers to keep project on track, skilled developers to code the requirements and skilled testers to ensure the beta release fulfilled the requirements to the letter.  And with Agile, it is exactly the same. A change in Waterfall costs more money, and same with Agile.  The point with Agile is that change was easier to introduce, and clients did not have to necessarily get all their requirements done from the outset.  I am not sure if this was a good attitude to have, given that Agile required a continual feedback loop that included the oft-unavailable client.  While clients and management liked the idea of Agile principles, at the same time, they behaved as if they didn’t apply to them.  More often than not, clients would become indignant if change involved cost, even though naturally increased time = increased cost.  Getting vision right from the outset is a sensible thing to keep in mind – whether Waterfall or Agile.

Another “radical” issue tracker

http://www.bugherd.com/welcome

Less of a recommendation, more of a why??? First bad impression was that the link sent in (unsolicited) email was broken, as they didnt take the time to test their email (derr!).

This is a complete mis-sell, and companies should be wary as it has use maybe at a pure design agency, but for an IT project … I think not.

An issue trackers by designers for designers – what a complete waste of time and shows the ignorance that comes forth when desginers attempt to dictate project methodology. If a company invest time and money into an issue tracking system, then the people they are paying wages to should damn well use it. The sales line is pretty unimpressive – boasting speed (I doubt it with the heavy AJAX usage), website embedding (poor lickle designers struggle with more than one window open at a time), and bizarrely insinuate they are offering a radical new search with tags(ooooh, that hasn’t been done before).

Any issue tracking system can be customised for clients, and very configurable. I dont know where their points of reference are (no comparisons here). I hate to break it to them, but web projects are technically driven, not by design. The web projects that get it the other way round are clunky, costly, and mask potential issues that can bring down sites.

If you buy this, then you are a mug who employs people who are bossing you around. This product is offering nothing new, just pandering to web project members who consider themselves above the project lifecycle. Being a designer is one thing – being a project team player is another thing entirely. If Bugherd is suggesting that designer use a different issue tracker, that is complete nonsense, and belies an ignorance to the overall process on a IT project.

“I don’t know how we ever lived without this.” says Michael Dwyer @ changefactory.com.au – I think you would have survived!

Tedious web service #1

I use web services quite often, especially in wordpress – and occasionally I find something it seems worth paying out a little bit of money for. Generally I find these services attentive and enthusiastic. But occasionally you find rather shabbier operations – and none more so in the area of WordPress. wpmdev.org are a free and premium wordpress MU site, with some useful themes and plugins. What isnt so cool is the shabby payments process – which sets up recurring payment, which is easy to miss if you are human, as it only appears AFTER intial payment has been processed.  This is highlighting also the general proliferation of websites taking sloppy measures to take payments, and largely because paypal and easy site commerce plugins, have made it way too easy.
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Hunt the Postbox

Free Our Data

Free Our Data

Do you know where your postboxes are?

Wonderful!  The Post Office are obstructing our information on where Postboxes are, by refusing to list their locations – their techniques at delivering bad service has reached level of an actual recognisable business approach.  And in keeping with turning Post Offices into some kind of Orwellian human cesspit. I always feel I am travelling to different parallel dimension.  The banks are always following the “confuse the customer” appraoch, newer confusing layouts which give appearance of futuristic banking, without provising anyone who can help you beyond taking money out and putting money in.  In the words of Roy from the IT Crowd, “What a bunch of b*stards!”.

Seedy behaviour

Online dating – beset with reputation of seediness.  Asides the fact meeting someone online seems no less risky than meeting someone when you are pie-eyed in a bar/club, or the low-chance blind-dates, it seems there is a glaring piece of legality that skips sites such as http://verynaughty.co.uk/.  There is a proliferation on dating sites, made easier by such services as http://www.whitelabeldating.com, who provide easy cheap quick start dating systems.  Then  all you have to do, as with http://verynaughty.co.uk/, is create a lot of fake adverts, and use it as front for cam girls.  Now as far as I can make out, there is nothign wrong with this – you state you intentions, and whether or not your site is accurate in presentation or content is by the by – until you start charging for it.  I name http://verynaughty.co.uk/, as it is one experience – no money lost, but left with feeling that there is probably many sites like this one.  I think these scam sites (that is what they are) are riding on fact people would be too embarassed to complain.  As a english atheist male, I have no such emabrassment – when have sex and relationships become something to be ashamed of.  Well, that is a different discussion!  I would be interested to know peoples experiences (not necessarily just dating), but any service (however cheap), that was not as presented prior to subscription.  And what you found you could do about it.  Sadly and predicatbly, http://verynaughty.co.uk/ tracks back to Nigeria, a haven for web scams of all kinds, including the infamous “you have won 28 zillion in nigerian lottery!!” scams.   This site is a scam, and I would challenge the site owners to prove otherwise.  For example I did a test (being QA :)) – for every type of contact i made, be it message or “wink” (how cheesy!), I got immediate wink back, from girls half my age with no photo, saying they couldnt wait to see me online.  Test upon test proved same result – this is a no-brainer – this site is a scam.

About Very Naughty Website

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From VeryNaughty, complete with appalling sentence construction and bad spelling!

E.ON – Power and Gas

Although the English service record has always been particularly poor, utilities companies seem to employ people with part of their brains missing.  I recently moved into new flat, and dutifully informed Eon of the change of tenant.  I now get two bills regularly twice a week – one billed to The Occupier for bill prior to me moving in, and one also addressed to “The Occupier” for subsequent bill.  Now it seems to me that they have obviously received my details, as the date up to, and date from, on the bills tallies.  Maybe they are hoping I will pay both bills to save them administration.  Must be so complicated changing one name to another – obviously is for a UK company, especially lazy inept parasitic ones like Eon.

BT also step up to the mark on this one, but in a manner intended to confuse and worry you enough to pay up regardless.  They are a far more shameless bunch of idiots, and in process of taking them to court, as we cannot allow companies to feel they can bully – that is simply plain cowardice on their part.

Actually I am missing the point – you want to screw more money out of your customers – apply unreasonable inflation-busting charges, keep the intimidation letters flowing, and hire idiots to administer – pure credit-crunch brilliance!  It worked for The Tube, National Rail, etc.  Incompetence should be rewarded, and now is in the UK – welcome to world of “Nathan Barley”, an oft referenced comedy from the very astute Chris Morris (and Charlie Brooker).

I am not too churlish not to wish all a happy new year, so Happy New Year Eon and BT! ….. you bunch of morons.

Methodology

 
The rest of us have all known that Agile Methodologies are stupid, by application of any of the following well-known laws of marketing:

– anything that calls itself a “Methodology” is stupid, on general principle.
– anything that requires “evangelists” and offers seminars, exists soley for the purpose of making money.
– anything that never mentions any competition or alternatives is dubiously self-serving.
– anything that does diagrams with hand-wavy math is stupid, on general principle.

And by “stupid”, I mean it’s “incredibly brilliant marketing targeted at stupid people.”

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html

This was pretty much the view of Agile a couple of years ago, and though progress has been made, the general experience has been that it will fail, unless there is cross-project adoption and involvement. Another quote from same article held my eye more though …

Scrums are the most dangerous phase in rugby, since a collapse or improper engage can lead to a front row player damaging or even breaking his neck.
— Wikipedia

Re-iterating the above diatribe really, but in amore succinct fashion. Weak links can bring a project crashinh down round your ears, but that does not worry me – the benefit of Agile/SCRUM environments is that weak links are identified a lot quick. You just hoope there is management with balls enough to remove then, or the quote will still apply.

Firstly I wish we could all agree another word apart from “methodology” – it is an overlong cumbersome word, that people like me (with slight problem with “th” sound) find a pointless annoyance. Secondly, I wish that project managers wouldnt latch on to methodologies (I can write it, I just dont like saying it) as the holy grail of project success. And thirdly, to remove the large gap in all new methodologies with testing, defined a “activity” rather than “resource” (© Andrei B), i.e. anyone can do it who is available. A no-brainer, but what would happen to other areas of the project with same philosophy? A tester has an outside and unbiased view. You wouldn’t accept an author review of their own book (even if they were being terribly post-modern, and writing a bad review). So why on earth leave development in sole charge of testing, or product managers with unrealistic deadlines, or anyone in fact who will not approach testing in the same structured way. All project memebers have their own agenda on what they expect to see – a Project Manager is looking for a pretty completion on MS Project, the developer is looking to move on to their next piece of code, a product manager is just waiting for a finished product that matches the list of requirement. A tester looks at all sides, and also primarily looks for faults and points of weakness, not to verify code (now that testing is a developers job).

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