Inability to stop questioning tulip design and standards

[Notascooby]

OK - Part Q / Part Rant

For those longer in the tooth than me....how do you stop looking at what's in place and basically telling thier design, policies and standards are tulip?

Even as a consultant I'd get too personal with the design, spending lots of time and energy on trying not just to give a solution that worked but was good (not OTT but fit for purpose i.e. not just a hack).

Now I'm in a large organisation but within a small satellite entity that's been largely left untouched by the big brother. As such they have adopted som of their own best practices and standards that are archaic and derrive from at time when storage was expensive or database locks and poor query performance were common.

Now I can sit there and just add to the tulip that's already there or try to make a difference. the business side know's that it's best not to ruffle feathers, do as they do and keep billing. But the professional in me weeps when I see it.

Anyway, meeting tomorrow to present a new sleeker governance model to get away from the fortnightly talk-shop model currently in place.

[Mich the Tester]

OK - Part Q / Part Rant

For those longer in the tooth than me....how do you stop looking at what's in place and basically telling thier design, policies and standards are tulip?

Even as a consultant I'd get too personal with the design, spending lots of time and energy on trying not just to give a solution that worked but was good (not OTT but fit for purpose i.e. not just a hack).

Now I'm in a large organisation but within a small satellite entity that's been largely left untouched by the big brother. As such they have adopted som of their own best practices and standards that are archaic and derrive from at time when storage was expensive or database locks and poor query performance were common.

Now I can sit there and just add to the tulip that's already there or try to make a difference. the business side know's that it's best not to ruffle feathers, do as they do and keep billing. But the professional in me weeps when I see it.

Anyway, meeting tomorrow to present a new sleeker governance model to get away from the fortnightly talk-shop model currently in place.

Best practices don't exist; only practices that work in a particular context.

[KimberleyChris]

Now I can sit there and just add to the tulip that's already there or try to make a difference. the business side know's that it's best not to ruffle feathers, do as they do and keep billing. But the professional in me weeps when I see it.

This is a self-answering question. I have lost one job through getting too involved. They wanted documents for counting by auditors - not using.

Add to the tulip, weep, invoice, and walk away at 5pm.

[Ignis Fatuus]

When I was taking over this project from the previous guy, who had given notice, as I looked at it I said to him, I think I have just stepped back 20 years in IT.

Later I said, maybe 30 years.

Now I think I may have been a shade conservative. And I understand why he gave notice. And why my contract doesn't have the notice option that his did.

[Ignis Fatuus]

This is a self-answering question. I have lost one job through getting too involved. They wanted documents for counting by auditors - not using.

Add to the tulip, weep, invoice, and walk away at 5pm.

I was actually tld by the boss not to ask too many questions or worry about it too much.

Right: smile. bill. go home.

[KimberleyChris]

Yep,

By the time the tulip hits the fan you will either be long gone, or you will get paid all over again to sort the mess out.

[Notascooby]

Insert appropriate smiley that shows a soul slowly dying.

[KimberleyChris]

Insert appropriate smiley that shows a soul slowly dying.

Yes, but dying at how many pounds/hour?

[jmo21]

Yep,

By the time the tulip hits the fan you will either be long gone, or you will get paid all over again to sort the mess out.

I was a lot like the OP, always wanting things to be done "the right way" whatever that was.

Eventually you realise that IT is more often than not submarined by all manner of tulip.

- Bad management
- Numpties elevated to technical positions making insane decisions
- No specs
- Incomplete specs
- Specs that haven't been updated in a year
- scope creep
- budget problems
- ludicrous timescale promises
- requirement changes on the whim off some director 3 levels up

and many, many more.

You just have to do your best.

As a contractor, you have to be bullet proof with your work, no doubt about that.

Just do your best and don't piss off the wrong person by getting all high and mighty about any of those things and you can invoice along merrily for ages.

Let the permies worry about the bulltulip.

[OwlHoot]

I was a lot like the OP, always wanting things to be done "the right way" whatever that was. ...

Careful what you wish for - Unfortunately an overly diligent dogmatic developer, given ample time to do things the "right way", will all too often (in fact usually) produce a system that is almost as monstrous and unwieldy, in its own way, as the kind of mess you're complaining about.

edit: I noticed you were talking in the past tense - I was the same. My reply was just a general observation.