Some things never change. RP On 18/04/07, Howard Winter wrote: > On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:02:23 -0400 (EDT), D. Jay Newman wrote: > > >... > > I remember one project's suggested timeline that had 9 months of design > > time and only one week of programmer time! This was a project that was > > accepted with a revised timeline and took several years to program. > > The thing that used to annoy me was when an inaugural meeting to discuss the feasibility of developing a new system > was followed by 18 months of silence, while the powers-that-be cogitated on whether they wanted it or not, and then > suddenly said "Yes, and we want it by the 1st of January", some time in September. If it takes a year and a half to > decide that it's needed, why do they think it only takes three months to make it happen? (From scratch, with only a > rough outline spec.) And hiring-in extra people to make it happen faster is a stupid idea: "You can't get nine women to > produce a baby in a month"... > > And choosing the 1st of January as a release date is utterly moronic - for a start it's a holiday anyway, secondly a lot > of things happen at the start of the year (accounting year-ends, and so on) so everyone is already busier than usual > and won't have time to learn a new system, and finally it's preceded by the most disrupted time of the year, when > many people take a few extra days from their annual allowance to make a ten or eleven day run of time away from > work. Not the time to have a looming deadline! > > > > Cheers, > > > Howard Winter > St.Albans, England > > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist