Multifunction Catch-up Post.

1. The clonking: turns out it was the Datatool bouncing around between
the glovebox and the air tubes in the fairing. now secured under an
old bike-washing sponge.

2. Shifting 250 litres of damp compost from an old broken bin to a new
one is not a dream job.

3. Projects: How do people put up with the corporate lunacy these
things generate?

 

You're the new Monty Don?! Are you one of the new presenters on
Gardeners World on Friday?

You dream about murdering work colleagues in your sleep and somehow
resist the temptation to translate the dream into reality.

 

Oh shit. I knew I should have read the last chapter in that book.

Expect "paging Kiran - legal advice needed" post shortly.

 

one of my senior developers asked if it would be OK to bring his
shotgun in to meetings with senior management.

 

I think you'd only allowed to flush them out with pairs of dogs these days.

 

days.

nah - "Hunting with Baboons" is still pukka.

 

what's wrong with projects?

Or are you objecting to projects with no management?

 

I thought it was his project - ie he was the management...

 

ah - that'd explain it.

 

It was a joke, implying that Paul's mention of dreaming about
murdering colleagues had been taken place in my reality. Just a joke.

I am in rather a spot of bother with an absolutely enormous Exchange
migration taking place, for which I have inadequate staff
(customer-supplied), inadequate time in which to deliver
(customer-determined) and some rather important stuff going on which
relies on the systems we're about to **** with.

 

Shrub's personal mail account?

 

And posting to usenet will get it done much quicker.

 

I think you'll find Ben is managing the project, not doing the physical
work.

Therefore posting on usenet will probably get it done quicker as it stops
him getting in the way of the people doing the work

 

That would make sense.

 

at a macro level, we use an internally defined process called "The IT
Project Lifecycle", which is basically RUP with the serial numbers
filed off.

Individual PMs seem to vary massively in quality here, with some not
using any coherant policy at all. What usually goes wrong is a
combination of over-promising/under-delivering and not being strict
enough about sticking to deadlines.

We also have some *huge* disconnects between different
departments/factions within IT, and a lack of goal congruity between
the IT facility as a whole and the business.

I only get involved in managing projects at a tactical level, though I
act as internal consultant for strategy. The projects I run are almost
all based on a lightweight development methodology, Scrum in
particular. Nothing goes wrong on my projects ;-)

Angie, and almost everyone in local authority project management uses
Prince 2.

 

Because that's the way the customer does things. No debate. That's
Govt. contracting for you. Far, far from ideal. At least it's
challenging.

Shamefully, we work on a "suck it and see" basis. It's not really a
project; it's really a massive staff aug, with lots of little projects
dotted around in pockets that comprise my staff and customer-supplied
personnel. I don't really have much control, except to insist that
something is (a) illegal, or (b) way outside scope. Almost everything
we do is outside scope, so I just save that for when we *can't* do
something.

 

I've just been threatened with having to go on a PM course. I'm
desperately trying to make sure it isn't a Prince 2 course.

Phil

 

charms?

Like anything else, if done right, it's a Good Thing. Almost no-one
does it right. It's also, IMO, only worth doing if everyone at every
level on the project is fairly technically-oriented. There's no point
in talking to a marketing chick about Actors and Use-cases. Generally,
I don't like it - I'm not generally a fan of Big Design Upfront, and
heavyweight methodologies in general.

RAD's good for one thing, and one thing only: proof-of-concepts and
wireframe prototypes. On anything "real", it's a recipe for ****-ups.

I was speaking to our Chief Architect the other day about why things go
wrong, why things that go right take ages to finish, why things are
just Not Good in general. We came to the - IMO - sound conclusion that
it is because the company employs 90% morons.

PMs suffer from "la-la-la I can't hear you" syndrome when developers
tell them things aren't going to plan. Worse, some developers
(thankfully none of my team) are poor at communicating the fact that
things are going wrong. This situtation rapidly snowballs into major
****-up mode.

Here, for example, our Infrastructure and Production team are actually
the major hindrance to getting a code release propagated from Dev
through UAT to Development. Go figure.

[Scrum]

It's a lightweight methodology that relies on getting good people, in
relatively small teams. It's not pretentious, like XP, and it doesn't
have the attitude like "oh, waterfall methodology was all 100%
inherently bad, so we'll do nothing like it at all, even if it's just
common sense" that some agile processes do.

http://www.controlchaos.com/

a) not at all - some of the systems I run as projects rely on
technologies of which I have little (or no recent) experience of (C++,
Flash Actionscript, VB).
b) much as I'd like to do this, all the stuff I work on is both tightly
budgeted and deadlined.
c) that's a factor - being able to trust your staff is vital. +
d) Hiring non-cunts.

it's worth noting also, that since passing the Prince 2 Practioners
exam (as opposed to the theory one), her "being pestered by job agents"
quotient has gone up by a magnitude.

Interesting to see that Phil is trying to avoid Prince 2 - IME it seems
to be a "add a good chunk to your potential salary" indicator if
coupled with sufficient experience.

 

Don't shoot until you see the reds of their bottoms.

 

Quelle surprise.

I don't mind it, funnily enough. Partly because I know that after
this, I can make any steaming pile of shite work.

Pretty much. Might well have my mortgage paid off in a couple of
years; as long as I can stem the tide of buying motorbikes and cars.