tmtbox » Project

101 Ways To Know Your Software Project Is Doomed

kevin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:17:44 +0000

Management has renamed its Waterfall process to Agile Waterfall
You start hiring consultants so they can take the blame
The Continuous Integration server has returned the error message “Fuck it, I give up”
You have implemented your own Ruby framework that uses XML configuration files
Your eldest team member references Martin Fowler as a ’snot-nosed punk’
Your source code control system is a series of folders on a shared drive
Allocated QA time is for Q and A why your crap is broken
All of your requirements are written on a used cocktail napkin
You start considering a new job so you don’t have to maintain the application you are building
The lead web developer thinks the X in XHTML means ‘extreme’
Ever iteration meeting starts with “Do you want the good news or the bad news…”
Your team still gives a crap about its CMM Level
Progress is now measured by the number of fixed bugs and not completed features
Continuous Integration is getting new employees to read the employee handbook
You are friends with the janitor
The SCRUM master doesn’t really care what you did yesterday or what you will do today
Every milestone ends in a dead sprint
Your best developer only has his A+ Certification
You do not understand the acronyms DRY, YAGNI, or KISS; but you do understand WTF, PHB, and FUBAR
Your manager could be replaced by an email redirection batch file
The only certification your software process has is ISO 9001/2000
Your manager thinks ‘Metrics’ is a type of protein drink
Every bug is prioritized as Critical
Every feature is prioritized as Trivial
Project estimates magically match the budget
Developers use the excuse of ’self documenting code’ for no comments
Your favorite software pattern is God Object
You still believe compiling is a form of testing
Developers still use Notepad as an IDE
Your manager wastes 7 hours a week asking for progress reports (true story)
You do not have your own machine and you are not doing pair programming
Team Rule – No meetings until 10 AM since we were all here until 2 AM
Your team believes ORM is a ‘fad’
Your team believes the transition from VB6 to VB.NET will be ’seamless’
Your manager thinks MS Project is the best management tool the market offers
Your spouse only gets to see you on a webcam
None of your unit tests have asserts in them
FrontPage is your web page editor of choice
You get into flame wars if { should be on new line, but you are impartial to patterns such as MVC
The company motto is ‘Do more with less’
The phrase ‘It works on my machine’ is heard more than once a day
The last conference your .NET team attended was Apple WWDC 2000
Your manager insists that you track all activity but never uses the information to make decisions
All debugging occurs on the live server
Your manager does not know how to check email
Your manager thinks being SOX compliant means not working on baseball nights
The company hires Senetor Ted Stevens to give your project kick-off inspiration speech
The last book you read – Visual InterDev 6 Bible
The overall budget is mistaken for your weekly Mountain Dew bill
Your manager spends his lunch hour crying in his car (another true story)
Your lead web developer defines AJAX as a cleaning product
Your boss expects you to spend the next 2 days creating a purchase request for a $50 component
The sales team decreased your estimates because they believe you can work faster
Requirement – Rank #1 on Google
Everyday you work until Midnight, everyday your boss leaves at 4:30
Your manager loves to say “Why do the developers care? They get paid by the hour.”
The night shift at Starbucks knows you by name
Management can not understand why anyone needs more than a single monitor
Your development team only uses source control as a power failure backup system
Developers are not responsible for any testing
The team does not use SVN because they believe the merge algorithms are black voodoo magic
Your white boards are mostly white (VersionOne)
The client continually mistakes your burn-down chart for a burn-up chart
The project code name is renamed to ‘The Death March’
Now it physically pains you to say the word – Yes
Your teammates don’t refactor, they refuctor
To reward you for all of your overtime your boss purchases a new coffee maker
Your project budget is entered in the company ledger as ‘Corporate Overhead’
You secretly outsource pieces of the project so you can blog at work
A Change Control Board is created and your product isn’t even its first alpha version
Daily you consider breaking your fingers for the short term disability check
The deadline has been renamed a ‘milestone’…just like the last ‘milestone’
Your project managers ‘open door’ policy only applies between 5:01 PM – 7:59 AM
Your boss argues “Why buy it when we can built it!”
You bring beer to the office during your 2nd shift
The project manager is spotted consulting a Ouija board
You give misinformation to your teammates so you look better on your personal review
All code reviews are scheduled a week before product launch
Budget for testing exists as “if we have time”
The client will only talk about the requirements after they receive a fixed estimation
The boss does not find the humor in Dilbert
You start noticing your boss’s poker tells during planning poker
You start wondering if working 2 shifts at Pizza Hut is a better career alternative
All performance issues are resolved by getting larger machines
The project has been demoted to being released as a permanent ‘Beta’ version
Your car is towed from the office parking lot as it was thought to be abandoned
The project manager likes to doodle during requirements gathering meetings
Your SCRUM team consists of 1
Your timesheet looks like a Powerball ticket
The web developer thinks being 508 means looking good in her Levi Red Tabs
You think you need Multiple Personality Disorder medication because you are Mort, Elvis, and Einstein
Your manager substitutes professional consultant advice for a Magic 8 Ball
You know exactly how many compile warnings cause an ‘Out of Memory’ exception in your IDE
I have used IDE twice in this list and you still don’t know what it stands for
You have cut and pasted code from The Daily WTF
Broken unit tests are deleted because they are obviously out of date
You are sent to a conference to learn, but you skip sessions to go hunting for swag
QA has nicknamed you Chief Off-By-One
You are using MOSS 2007
You have been 90% complete 90% of the time
“Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too… thanks” [by codesqueeze]

Top 10 Ways to Know Your Software Project is Doomed

Here is my top 10 from this list of 101 ways to know your software project is doomed:

Developers use the excuse of “self documenting code” for no comments
All of your requirements are written on a used cocktail napkin
Progress is now measured by the number of fixed bugs and not completed features
Your source code control system is a series of folders on a shared drive
Your manager wastes 7 hours a week asking for progress reports
The phrase “It works on my machine” is heard more than once a day
Developers are not responsible for any testing
All code reviews are scheduled a week before product launch
You have cut and pasted code from The Daily WTF
The last book you read: Oracle 8i A Beginner’s Guide.

What’s your favorite one?

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Google Launches Gears Open Source Project to Bring Offline Capabilities to Web Applications

kevin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:10:53 +0000

At Google Developer Day, New Browser Extension Provided to Developer Community

Google Developer Day 2007

SYDNEY, Australia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced at Google Developer Day 2007 that it is providing developers with Google Gears??, an open source technology for creating offline web applications. This new browser extension is being made available in its early stages so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it. The long-term hope is that Google Gears can help the industry as a whole move toward a single standard for offline capabilities that all developers can use.

Google Gears marks an important step in the evolution of web applications because it addresses a major user concern: availability of data and applications when there’s no Internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable. As application developers and users alike want to do more on the web—whether it’s email or CRM or photo editing—enhancements that make the browser environment itself more powerful are increasingly important.

“With Google Gears we’re tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud,” said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. “We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what’s possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone.”

Google is offering Google Gears as a free, fully open source technology in order to help every web application, not just Google applications. As a first example of what is possible, the Google Reader™ feed reader (http://reader.google.com) is available today with Gears-enabled offline capabilities.

Industry support

Google will be working closely with all members of the web community to converge upon a standard so developers have one consistent API for offline functionality.

“We’re very excited to be collaborating with Google to move the industry forward to a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. “The Gears API will also be available in Apollo, which enables web applications to run on the desktop, providing developers with consistent offline and local database solutions.”

“This announcement is a significant step forward for web applications,” said Brendan Eich, CTO at Mozilla Corporation. “We’re pleased to see Google working with open source and open standards bodies on offline web applications.”

“Opera and Google share the common goal of making Web applications richer and more robust,” said Håkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software. “Developers have long desired the functionality and flexibility Google Gears can offer browsers. Because Opera has always prioritized giving our users what they want, we’re excited to work with Google to extend the reach and power of Web applications.”

Another tool in the application development toolbox

Google Gears builds on the web’s existing programming model by introducing new JavaScript APIs for sophisticated data storage, application caching, and multi-threading features. With these APIs, developers can bring offline capabilities to even their most complex web applications. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux.

Google Gears is available now at http://gears.google.com/.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Google, Google Gears, and Google Reader are trademarks of Google Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.