Translation: We've had to go before our management and their management and demonstrate that we, the project
office, are grossly imcompetent in managing a program, specifying the requirements, estimating the cost, or even know
what it is that we want. For some reason, unknown to us, we were able to give a plausible [remotely possible] case
that we were competent. Do you know what will happen to us if we go back and ask for more money? I'd rather have all
my teeth pulled out with a pair of pliers and no anesthesia.
I think the gov't had a fairly good idea of what it wanted. But the company guys doing the estimating were totally incompetent.
How did the company sell it? They claimed they would get 95% code re-use from previous programs. Now if you've been in the software business any length of time, the mere use of the words "code re-use" makes you nervous. It has an anaesthetic effect on management and you, the bit beater, pay the price. Except in this case the price was so huge that even heroic efforts by the bit beaters code remove that power of manure. With rare exceptions, code re-use is BS.
It also seems likely that the resultant pony, if there is one, will be a mutant, that no one will want. This is not good.
Actually it looks like the odds are rather good that at this point it will run. I know my part will. They've thrown everything they can think of at it and it spits it back and does it's job.
But I also got buried under that pile. I was originally supposed to design, code, debug, etc., my task all by myself. I did all the design and all of the first version of code. And design changes started wandering in. Then more. Then more. About a year and a half ago I yelled UNCLE because I couldn't keep up with fixing bugs found in testing and keeping up with design changes. (This has been by far the worst case of requirements creep in my 30 years of software.) I yelled for help. And didn't get it. I started putting in more and more time at work. 50 hours. 60 hours. 70 hours. 7 days a week. I kept this up for about 9 months. Then my back gave out. I have an old back injury. I wasn't getting any exercise and I was doing lots of sitting. A recipe for disaster. I started getting severe muscle spasms and had to stop working. I was completely gone for a month. When I cam back to work I had a doctor's letter limiting me to three hours a day of work.
And suddenly that help I'd yelled for showed up. Several people in fact. We got the job done.
And I have serious doubts that I'll ever be able to work a 40-hour week again. Fortunately, I don't have to. I worked for a startup abut 15 years back and they went public a few years ago. And that pretty piece of paper that said "stock certificate" was suddenly worth something.
I am considering just what action I want to take in this matter though.
Your client organization may [or may not, at their option] distribute this metric to other government organizations. This is not good.
Somehow I doubt it. They look like idiots too. |
