51
eo2875
3y

Always the same story:

Marketing: hey I'm gonna do a demo to a customer. They were asking for feature XYZ. That's ready on thr staging server right? Do you think I could use the staging server for the demo?

Devs: well feature XYZ is not 100% done. Basically just feature X is done, and it still has a few bugs. The deadline ain't for another month, since we gotta finish ABC first. I guess you could use the staging, but it has a lot of bugs.

Marketing: perfect!

*after presentation*

Marketing: the staging had so many bugs! Why didn't you tell me?! It was so embarrassing showing it to new customers! Anyway, they loved the new feature. We need it to be ready ASAP.

Devs: What?! That's gonna mess up with our schedule. You know what? Fine, but feature ABC will have to wait another month.

Marketing: Well, it'd be ideal if we could do both...

Devs: Pay for more devs or dor extra hours.

Marketing: Just do XYZ. It's a pity that you'll have to push back ABC but it's fine, XYZ is more important.

(I might ask, if it was so important, why didn't you notice so in the meeting where we had decided that ABC would be prioritized?)

*tons of working hours later*

Devs: There, we finished XYZ.

Marketing: Yay! Wow, this month we'll have two major features done: ABC and XYZ!

Devs: No, ABC is not done yet.

Marketing: What? But the deadline was this week.

Devs: It was, but then you decided to prioritize XYZ and we said we had to push back ABC to get XYZ ready, and you agreed.

Marketing: Did we? Fine. But do it quick.

Marketing and their mood swings.

Comments
  • 28
    Marketing shouldn’t be allowed to talk directly to devs or have any real say in the schedule of release. Thats just asking for problems.
  • 20
    I have had very similar experiences to this. The worst was when we did a hackathon for a day to prototype some people’s ideas. Sales were selling the ideas as features the following week.
  • 17
    Marketing: hey can I use staging for a demo?

    Dev: sure, what day is the demo on?

    Marketing: (whenever date)

    Dev: oh dang, sorry! it's going to be under maintenance for xyz feature. It might take a couple days for us to get it back up again. You're welcome to use the demo environment though.

    Marketing: does that mean that xyz will be going to production afterwards?

    Dev: probably not, this is the first phase. It should be done early though, we're targeting (actual release date).

    Marketing: isn't that the actual release date though?

    Dev: *checks calendar* huh... So it is. Well anyway good luck with your demo!
  • 1
    Now I always demand an email confirmation to change task direction XD
  • 1
    Was in similar situation for an actual marketing website. Had a firm discussion and added a paper trail. Last part is important because after the talk it will improve for a short time and they need to be confronted with the bullshit they pull regularly.

    For example the discussion about the demo would have been logged for two reasons. No pushes to staging (make devs aware) and put the warnings in writing. The bullshit about so buggy well l can be stapled to their forehead.
Add Comment