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.)

t /takes notes for Stupid Thesis

In other random news, I just started watching Walking Tall, and the Rock's family (parents, sister, nephew) looks more like they could be a real family than I've seen in a movie in a long time.

Coming from the other side (a member of a management team who implemented a new software system company-wide), we did want to change some old business processes to match the new software because our old practices were not efficient, etc.

But, we did interviews with every single person in the company to understand their job and how they did it. After assessing the processes from a bigger picture, we changed them. For some people, that mean more work, but overall, it is significantly less work.

Also, we did change the software to fit our processes when it made more sense to do that.

Our process changes were definitely done thoughtfully, with a lot of discussion and input from those who do them.

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?

Probably a fair amount, if it's clear that taking the stab was a decision. Though, even if you fuck up, finishing alive and disabling the attacker is a win.

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.

This is a weird position to be put in. Sometimes, as business analyst, I'm denied access to the eventual end users. Or I'm given access to one, who swears up and down that what she does is the one true way, and everyone does it that way. Because management is unwilling to allocate their resources to the requirements gathering process, requirements fall by the wayside.

Sometimes the end users get tetchy at being asked questions. And I'm always stunned by the number of users who know what they're doing, but don't know why, or what happens to the work product once it leaves their line of sight. The minute they realise they don't know, and that I've noticed they don't know, things start to get tense.

And then there are things that we discover the end users are doing in their as is flow, but no one can agree on the to be version. There's always someone who gets pissy when you try and stop them from doing what they were doing, and someone else who has extravagant ideas of how things should actually go, and is upset when their idea doesn't make the feature list.

And sometimes the software sucks.

I just had a somewhat reassuring talk with my manager about the temporary reassignment -- he's of the opinion that the E-Commerce section is the least fucked-up module of the SAP reconnect, so I may be dealing with something that is at least tolerable. But still.. it's E-Com, so intended to be used by customers, so it'd better have a user-friendly interface, which I have yet to see demonstrated in a single SAP module to date.

Because mamangement is unwilling to allocate their resources to the requirements gathering process, requirements fall by the wayside.

This is the problem where I work. It's an ungodly bureaucratic company, and there's really nothing anyone can do about it. It's just too big.

But our website was completely unusable to Mac-users for almost a year after its launch, and that's a huge chunk of clients in the video production business. We pointed this out repeatedly to Management, and then got bitched at for not making enough web sales. And so it goes.

Christ, that's a horrible typo.

Co-worker one cube over must have been making a private call. Otherwise the number of times she yawned broadly is beyond the pale. I could see her rear molars every time. Because I couldn't not look. It's like cars keep crashing just three feet over.

Timelies all!

Looks like a quiet weekend here. Tomorrow I have to wrestle the cat into her carrier to bring her to the vet for her annual checkup. Joy.

Oh, my. I'm to be managing a project whose goals include "restore user confidence in the XYZ infrastructure and their support team." I thought that "perform ABC with efficiency" was going to be hard to make 'SMART' (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and tangible).

Yoinks.

"Joe whines only once a week." "George reduced to tears after 3 weeks, not two." " Users stop using the word fuck in their support calls."

I get to have a driving adventure tonight. I'm hoping it isn't where I think it is.