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sboesch5465y@Traser Thank you! Happened a while ago and just received another xls out of the blue. Thought I'll rant about it first :)
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sboesch5465y@kgbemployee You're absolutely right, but when this happened, I hadn't much experience in handling clients and was scared to make this situation worse.
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@torpkev There's always somebody, if it isn't the client, it's the dev manager, or a project manager fixated on some abstract implementation of Agile, or remember SysAdmins? Remember what those crazy talented assholes used to put us through? all of this just compounds and by the time you're able to focus on coding, or sending the proper work request form to the SysAdmin, the only thing running through your head is how shit it is to work against yourself on so many levels. Your soul dies a little.
I don't do as much hand coding as I used to, but I won't let a single item be allocated until the spec is fully agreed upon by all stakeholders and signed off by myself, an architect, and analyst and someone from business or the client (whichever is appropriate)
The other model just isn't sustainable, because once you're taught your clients how to treat you, human nature will have them pushing all kinds of boundaries... -
Nooby mistake.
If you really have to do any sort of excel/csv/... import, stress the importance of the data structure.
Make sure you explicitly state to the client, via mail, that only the provided data structure is supported. And that all and any alterations will be ignored.
They'll probably still f it up, but at least you made sure to cover yourself and the company you work for.
Related Rants
[Client]
We've noticed we gave you the wrong product prices for our new online shop.
[Dev]
Yeah, just login to the backend and fix them.
[Client]
But we don't want to use your fancy backend, we'll be using anyway soon - we want EXCEL!
Could you send us an EXCEL, so we can fix that?
How much will this cost?
[Dev]
Sure... here you are.
Not that much, takes about an hour.
[Client]
Great, you'll hear from us in a few days.
(a few months later...)
[Client]
We've finally managed to update the EXCEL. And btw, we've also added a bunch of columns with product pictures and new properties, highlighted products to delete red, inserted some comments with manual instructions and basically destroyed the entire data structure of this table.
Before I forget... also make sure to get this finished today, we have to go live ASAP. Our marketing campaign is already live.
[Dev]
Well, I'm sorry to say this, but this is not possible.
I'm currently working on another project and it will take me hours to clean up the data you sent me, before even starting to build an import tool for the new data you provided. Better stop the campaign and I'll do my best to get this done by the end of the week. Also it may be a bit costly.
(angry client calls immediately...)
(dev transfers to manager...)
(client transfers to client's boss...)
[Manager]
Ok Dev, I think I was able to explain it to them. However, it would be great if you spend day and night to get this thing out ASAP.
[Dev]
No problem...
I'll just do it by hand to get this out immediately.
(few days later; nearly done, exhausted)
[Client]
Hey Dev, here's another EXCEL.
We've just noticed there were a bunch of errors in the previous one. Please use this instead...
rant
clients