"Beware of your 'firefighters,' they are probably your chief arsonists."
- Bryce's Law
INTRODUCTION
The following is a true story; a vintage "Dilbertism." Because of this, migue cabrera jersey the names have been changed to protect the innocent (as well as the guilty). Interestingly, I do not believe this story to be unique and similar stories can be found in countless IT shops around the world.
Our story begins just a couple of years ago in a large manufacturing company in the American mid-west. At the time, the company was interested in replacing two aging, yet important, systems; an Accounts Payable System ("AP") and an Accounts Receivable System ("AR"). The IT Director selected two of his most seasoned veterans to manage the projects, we'll call them "Steve" and "Bob." Both project managers were charged with their responsibilities on the same day: Steve to build the AP system, and Bob to build the AR system. Both were given approximately he same amount of human and machine resources to accomplish the work.
Steve was a very organized and disciplined manager. He found it essential to organize and train his staff up-front so everyone understood the development process, the deliverables to be produced, and their assigned responsibilities. Recognizing the large scope of his project, Steve felt it important to methodically attack his system and meticulously worked out a plan and schedule to implement it. In Phase 1 he spent what appeared to be an inordinate amount of time studying the business problem, specifying information requirements, and developing a rough design of the system solution.
Steve also recruited the support of the AP Department and had key personnel from this area participate in the development of the system. The input from these users was vital not only in Phase 1, but also in succeeding phases where the business processes were designed.
By concentrating on the overall system architecture and then by gradually refining the design over succeeding phases, the Software Engineers were given detailed specifications which were easy to follow and implement. Consequently, the programming phases went smoothly, including testing.
The core sub-systems satisfying the operational needs of AP were on schedule and being installed with great support from the user community.
While Steve's project was coming along smoothly, Bob was facing chaos with the AR system. Instead of studying the problem up-front, Bob's group began by building a core data base. Shortly thereafter he set his programmers to work building some basic input screens and some rather simple outputs. In no time, Bob had something to demonstrate to the user community (and his boss) to prove progress was indeed being made.
But Bob's group had not done their homework. The AR community
was not consulted and requirements were not defined. As a result, programmers were left second-guessing what the users really needed which started a long round of "cut-and-fitting" the code. Further, the integrity of the data base came into question. False assumptions were made about calculated data elements which cascaded throughout the program code. In addition, data validation rules were not established. This forced the programmers to invent their own rules and formulas for calculations in each of their programs which led to data redundancy issues and even bigger migue cabrera jersey headaches for the development staff. As users were given glimpses of the programs by Bob, data integrity issues became an issue and the users didn't trust the information being produced by the system (e.g., calculations were computed differently by the various programs). Bob's group touted the AR system as "state-of-the-art," but the users were not convinced it was reliable or intuitive to use.
All of this lead to a re-design of the data base and programs, not just once but several times. Consequently, the project schedule started to slip and costs exceeded budget. To overcome this problem, Bob and his staff worked overtime to play catch-up with the schedule (which he never realized). Regardless, the IT Director began to take notice of the long hours Bob and his team were putting into the project and complimented them on their dedication.
没有评论:
发表评论