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Sounds about right, I have clients were I ask questions of details of certain features and ask for a reply back ASAP.
I get the reply a month and half later right before I go on some vacation time, their reply gave me 2 months of work.
I swear it's just easier NOT dealing with the stakeholders sometimes. -
I more or less gave up the illusion that any feature taking more than a week to do will survive to production without extra changes.
Problem many times is that stakeholders just cannot imagine all requirements.
So I favor a more “agile” (yes that is with a fair bit of irony) approach with frequent checkins and a more loose time table.
And if there is a hard deadline I use that as a big hammer on any idea or request that might affect the deadline.
Stakeholders get a bit grumpy but usually agree that the deadline still is real, and if they admit its not we go back to doing it as we go.
But I do have 30+ years of talking to customers + my own age as an argument, I would be much less successful if I was younger.
One important part is to try to weight different requirements against each other instead of just saying no.
By pitting their requests at each other you shift the focus away from “how long” to “pick one”. But it do require you to understand the goal and be able to reason about the benefits of each request. -
Stop right there imbecilic scum! Nobody violates the development cycle on my watch! I'm round filing your belated comments. Now shut up or I am ejecting you from the building!
For reference:
"Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on my watch! I'm confiscating your stolen goods. Now pay your fine or it's off to jail."
* Gets handed additions to current software platform (web)
* Gives back estimte of time after meeting with everyone and making them understand that once the testing phase of the project is reached there will be no changes, tests should be exhaustive and focus on SAID FUNCTIONALITY of the new additions. NO CHANGES OR ADDITIONS AT THIS POINT IN TIME
* All directives, stakeholders, users etc agreed on my request and spend an additional hour thinking of different corner and edge cases as provided by me in case they can't think of them (they can't, because they are fucking stupid, but I provided everything)
* Boss looks irritated at their lack of understanding of the scope and the time needed, nods in approval after he sees my entire specification, testing cases, possible additions to the system etc
* All members of the committee decide on the requirements being correct, concrete and proper.
* Finish the additions in a couple of weeks due to the increased demand for other projects, this directly affects the user base, so my VP and Director make it a top priority, I agree with their sentiment, since my Director knows what he is doing (real OG)
* I make the changes, test inside of my department and then stage for the testing environment. Everything is ready, all migrations are in order, the functionality is working as proper and the pipeline for the project, albeit somewhat lacking in elegance is good to go.
* Testing days arrive
* First couple of hours of test: Oh, you know what, we should add these two additional fields, and it would be good if the reporting generated by the system would contain this OTHER FORMAT rather than this one.
* ME: We stated that no additions would be done during the testing environment, testing is for functionality, not to see if you can all think of something else, even then, on June 10 I provided a initial demo and no one bothered to check on it on say something.
Them: Well, we are doing it now, this is what testing is for.
Me: Out of this room, the software engineer is me, and I can assure you, testing is not for that. I repeatedly stated that previously, I set the requirements, added corner cases, tables charts everything and not one single one of you decided to pay attention or add something, actually, said functionality you are requesting was part of one of my detailed list of corner cases, why did you not add it there and then before everything went up?
Them: Well I didn't read it at the time (think of the I in plural form since all of these dumb fucks stated the same)
Then my boss went on a rampage on their dumbasses.
I fucking hate software development sometimes.
Oh well. Bunch of fucking retards.
rant
fucking retards