Too Much of a Good Thing

Nobody appreciates a Prophet until after the fact. Then they most appreciate a Prophet who can refrain from saying, "I told you so."

Despite my last post about Honesty, you should realize that too much of it at once can poison a person. It's up to you to regulate the dose, but see that you do so, over time. Raise or lower the amounts based on how the patient responds.

An application I am involved in has seen the worst of it: no requirements, poor documentation, it's the re-write of a bad source application, and it's had complete staff turnover since it began. The data used to provide the application is not only a nightmare, it can't be changed because it belongs to another party and/or connects directly to other things.

The client who hired us to re-write the application doesn't care about this, and they shouldn't. You have to remember that the client doesn't care what you have to go through. They don't want to know about how awful it's been, how sad it was when the developer walked out, and how upset everyone's been at the office. What they care about is results. You have to have something to show.

Our team is making its best efforts. Progress has been unbelievably slow, for a lot of reasons. And worst of all, it seems to be extremely difficult to get anything going that the client can get their hands on and see for themselves. This is the last time to be laying the drama on the Man who signs your paycheck.

Many sins led us to this point, but it will be interesting to see whether our efforts will truly be allowed to continue. It would be a shame if they didn't, but it wouldn't exactly be a surprise.