bitter experience

Allyson, I work for a multi-national company and we have software that we have to use every day that neither works like we were told it would nor works for the end user. We actually have software that we had built for a specific use and cost us close to $2million, that we can't use and are getting ready to trash. So sorry though. I feel your pain, really I do. Now I just have zen about it, because I spent 17 months pissed off and complained to everyone I could think of (as did my boss) and it made no difference so now I'm all lalala about it but it took 17 months to get there.

Now I'm all double-plus paranoid about my Stupid Thesis, since it's about picking software that would be used by people who won't like it no matter what. Argh. But I do have like 25 pages written, so that's something.

since it's about picking software that would be used by people who won't like it no matter what.

Soooo.... it's all YOUR fault?

Wouldn't one buy/modify the software to bend to the way the user conducts business, and NOT make the user bend to software's fucked up idea of how other people do business?

Take what Rick said, and substitute "SAP" whereever he used "Peoplesoft".

Starting Monday, I'm going to be QAing the E-Commerce module for three weeks -- yes, pulled out of my application developer job, which is currently in the midst of redesigning everything just about because the SAP business system is so fucked up in relation to our business model (publishing! which is not like manufacturing ball bearings, damn it).

My evil plan is to be so awesomely nit-picky about the QA I'm going to do that I'm going to bury their managers beneath an avalanche of complaints and major bug reports and make them trade me back because they really don't want somebody pointing out that the Emperor's New Software has no clothes on it.

I work for a company that makes highly customizable reporting software, so I'm all for customizing software to meet the user's needs. But I would be all for it anyway.

OMG, Peoplesoft!!!

We've been cursed with peoplesoft too - all our accounting stuff/hr stuff is done on it and now -- they're switching Registration and Records to it. . . .

The plan is to NOT have someone stab you with a real knife, right?

How much cred do you get if you allow them to stab you in a non-vital area so as to maneuver into position for a decisive blow while their knife arm is entangled?

Soooo.... it's all YOUR fault?

Not my fault!! The organization wants people to go from index cards to a comprehensive database. It's THEIR fault! I'm just talking about it. For 28 pages, so far.

Universities are creative places where people do things in different ways.

Ain't just universities. I work for a company about 40,000 strong, and sometimes we get the software altered to fit the way we work. Except there is no way we work. We're an amalgam of about 15 companies, some of which still maintain independent IT groups, and really have their own ways of both doing business and implementing software solutions.

It is a bitch, and also the reason I have a job.

But sometimes, and don't think it won't pain some members of the software implementation group, the code just won't do that. Not for amounts of money the buyer is willing to spend.

On a much smaller scale, they changed out the line-of-business software at the krav centre. The people that actually had to use it raised such a ruckus with management and the vendor that it was taken off in a month. Now they're on their second attempt at new software. The cursing seems to be quieter, but it's amazing how many methods of working that just seem to make sense can't be done without extra cost in a number of packages.

My main beef with the software situation here is that about half of what we use is proprietary. Someone was hired to create it specifically for us. This someone is always hired by Upper Management with no input from the people who will actually be using the shiny new software. Instead, we get handed a new database/accounting/whatever system with buggy bells and whistles that we don't need, and missing several essential features, and we just figure out how to work around it. After a year, a survey will come around asking how the software is working out and what improvements we'd like to suggest (and then, as far as I can tell, the surveys are simply buried in soft peat for three months before being fed to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal).

It amazes me how much money is wasted paying developers to create software with no user input at all about what we actually need. (And then more money is spent on time-management seminars after Upper Management notices that we're not as efficient as we could be, maybe because we spend hours and hours a day wrestling with the idiotically designed software they were so proud of comissioning for us.)