[thelist] RE: The need for IE-only sites?

jsWalter jsWalter at torres.ws
Wed Jul 7 21:49:53 CDT 2004


> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org 
> [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Diane Soini
> Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 9:26 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] RE: The need for IE-only sites?
> 
> 
> I find this thread (The need for IE-only sites?) interesting if only 
> because I'm having a bummer day, feeling that the attitude really is 
> "standards? who cares?" Why:...

Oh, the lost souls in the wilderness.

Forever seeking the unobtainable. Forever pining for the unreachable.

The cries in the night. The cold wind of bureaucracy, the icy glare of
management. The yearning to be free, to create, to, to....

Oh, who cares!

I've been doing this for 10 years.

I've worked for companies small and *very* large (GM large enough?).
Nothing changes. Timeline, production deadline attitudes. Those who
don't know, who don't care, those who make the decisions on when
something is to be complete, how much to spend, regardless of quality.
Regardless of maintainability. Eh! That's some other poor slobs problem!

My favorite story is D&T (you figure it out) did some custom work for
KP. Workflow management. $50k piece of software. They spent 1.5 million
"customizing" it to fit KP's needs.

Those who were to use refused. It expanded their workflow time from
about 50secs to almost 5 minutes. Not something I'd call an improvement.

I got "lucky". Our company (being there for something else entirely) was
asked to do an assessment. See how this can be "fixed".

I spent 3 days interviewing those who do the work. Understanding their
flow. Not what manager thought was the flow.

Then I spent 2 days building mockups. Dummy HTML (yes, this was a web
based system) to test my theories.

Spent the next 2 days "interviewing" and user studying how the "workers"
use what I "fixed".

We got the system back down to 1 minute 20 seconds.

Alls well!? Well, not really. D&T said it would take another 3/4 million
to modify the interface to fit what was mocked up.

Seems the coders had hard coded the interface to fit best with what they
needed to "update" the code with little regard for the placement of
fields. They had create on LONG form. Forced the users to jump up and
down the form so they could complete the form in the pattern they
needed.

So, three guesses on what was done.

Yep! D&T was awarded another, similar project, this was scrapped, and KP
spent another million on another system.

Yep, who cares.

I just wish I could get paid that kind of money for crap work.

Hey, if you every find that job, please, see if they have room for one
more! ;)

Walter




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