“Even a fool can use this system!!!!”
This requirement is proposed by an IT manager of an air company.
We did this HR succeed system for this company , and the project lasts for more than 5, or even 6 months, which are planned to complete within one month before 1st, May.
The whole project is divided into two terms. At first, the customer's manager just offer us one month, which may include the require analyse, system design , development, and test phrases. That may sounds horrible! Yep, it's a nightmare. Coding is not a hard work , i may build 4 or 5 similar pages in one day. The worst thing is that their requirement is always changing. HR manager may tell their customer project manager what to do and what should be modified, and the customer project manager then tell our PM, or developer what to change. The result is that to finish the project before deadline, we give much more priority to the progress rather than the system design and reusability.
everything may just end in may, but we are all wrong.
3 months later, they require us to modify the system according to their instruction, and also fix some bugs that may be caused by the changing requirements.
nowadays, nightmare comes... ...
we have to accept the requirement changing again and again, even today's is just against what it is yesterday.
And what's more, the version control problem appears. Different incompleted version of projects are against each other. We may take a lot of time to fix the version problem, even did some function again... ... things went bad, we met devil.
The poor system structure and poor system design also "help" a lot..
That was a failure, i might conclude , but what should be blamed to? May be a lot... ...
These days, i recall a sentence said by their IT manager: "Even a fool can use this system!!!!"
The pursue of the system detail problems, which may be easily fixed ,ruled or ignored by the rule or by the user guide, cost a lot of our energy, and it result in the situation that we lose the control of the whole requirement. When we found that the business requirement has been ignored or even misunderstanded, we have to go back to modify it.
How can we control the project? our pm is a typical failure... ...
1. It's important to find a balance point between the detail and general.
2. Don't always consider a system from customer's point, sometimes hold dev's point. It may bring a lot of convenience, and may be much more easier to maintain the system.
3. Don't follow all the customer's suggestion and requirement, they are not god always.
4. Spare a definite man, or set this role in the later term of a project. It may brings a lot of benefits.
5. To work with a mid-age IT man is the worst thing :), they know a little, but they don't know they don't know... ...