Re: Thoughts on working WITH developers...

Subject: Re: Thoughts on working WITH developers...
From: Betsy Perry <betsyp -at- VNET -dot- NET>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 11:47:10 -0500

------- start of forwarded message -------
From: jdhickey -at- GROUPE-PROGESTIC -dot- COM ("HICKEY, John David")

Greetings!

|*The "I'm busy" syndrome. Hey, I'm busy too! If I weren't, I'd probably
|not have my job. My response to this excuse is usually a jocular, "Aren't
|we all."

I've gotten this attitude as well, although the most extreme case of it was
when I needed to interview a SME and he flat out stated he had no time to
spend reading/correcting/commenting on the documentation.
--- end of forwarded message ---

When I've encountered this, I try to meet the developer half-way:
"Okay, when WILL you have time to deal with documentation?". Then I
keep my manager posted with the new dates for interviews, and with any
resulting schedule slip.

Every so often, I run into a real brick wall -- the interview time
slips, and slips, and slips, while the ship date doesn't. The last
time this happened, I said, politely, to the developer: "Trading off
documentation time for development time means that there will be no
documentation in time for the release. I'm going to need to inform my
management, and your management, of this. Okay?"

And I did, very politely, say to engineering management, "Fred says
that if he gives me time to document this product, the product won't
make the release. This means that we are trading off feature
availability against no documentation. Is this acceptable?"

And it was acceptable, and the product shipped undocumented. But that
was long ago, at a company that no longer exists. Sometimes you win,
and sometimes the dragon wins.
--
Elizabeth Hanes Perry betsyp -at- vnet -dot- net


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