Had the most colourful meeting with a database developer today. Crazy Russian dude. He's hard work, high maintenance and pretty stoppy but gets the job done. I stuck my neck out for him a while ago and got him an extension.
So this is the data migration I am delivering. Specs written ages ago and circulated. The business have signed off. I sent them to this crazy Russian dude and arranged a meeting to go through them. During this meeting he waxed lyrical about database theory, best practice, the Oracle toolset, the history of Oracle, different notations yada yada yada. Bit of a database nerd
I love all that, and his passion for his subject. I just about managed to shoe-horn talking about the specs and explaining the storyboard I put together to link them all together. It's quite basic but works. You can see each step the data takes on it's journey through the migration process, and against each step is a requirement number which is part of the baseline the business have signed off against. Each requirement number has a more detailed functional specification, and relates to an exception report. Even assumptions and acceptance criteria are documented within the specs. Not the best specs in the world, but they'll pass an audit, just.
This is the thing, IT projects are all about hitting deadlines imposed by managers that like setting dates. So corners have to be cut.
Anywho, the specs were with this Oracle developer for over a week and I asked him to send me any questions he had. I checked with him mid week, no issues. I checked with him on Friday, no issues and he had started the build.
But the build was going wrong. He was blatantly working to his own interpretation, which was wrong. I gently pointed this out, showed him why it was wrong, where it was clearly stated in black and white and the consequences of doing it wrong. He got quite defensive and said the technical implementation was none of my business and I should butt out and accept what I am given.
I let it slide as he was getting controntational and it was only going to get more heated. I approached him again today to see if he'd mellowed. It seems not. A tyrannical outburst of four letter words came out of him. Positively foaming like a thing posessed. I had to ask him a few times to take it down a notch, which didn't help
Apparently the specs are all tulipe, the worst he's seen in 30 years, a kindergarten child could have done better yada yada yada. I ended the meeting.
A few hours later came an apology and then a polite list of questions on the specs which I was surprised he had to ask but were easy enough to field.
Interesting day at the office to say the least. Still I tipped him as the man for the job, and I still believe he is so will defend him to the hilt, but by ****ery if he'd start trading targetted questions and sql rather than blows we'd get a lot more done.
Anyone got any primadonna stories to share (non about me
)
So this is the data migration I am delivering. Specs written ages ago and circulated. The business have signed off. I sent them to this crazy Russian dude and arranged a meeting to go through them. During this meeting he waxed lyrical about database theory, best practice, the Oracle toolset, the history of Oracle, different notations yada yada yada. Bit of a database nerd
I love all that, and his passion for his subject. I just about managed to shoe-horn talking about the specs and explaining the storyboard I put together to link them all together. It's quite basic but works. You can see each step the data takes on it's journey through the migration process, and against each step is a requirement number which is part of the baseline the business have signed off against. Each requirement number has a more detailed functional specification, and relates to an exception report. Even assumptions and acceptance criteria are documented within the specs. Not the best specs in the world, but they'll pass an audit, just.
This is the thing, IT projects are all about hitting deadlines imposed by managers that like setting dates. So corners have to be cut.
Anywho, the specs were with this Oracle developer for over a week and I asked him to send me any questions he had. I checked with him mid week, no issues. I checked with him on Friday, no issues and he had started the build.
But the build was going wrong. He was blatantly working to his own interpretation, which was wrong. I gently pointed this out, showed him why it was wrong, where it was clearly stated in black and white and the consequences of doing it wrong. He got quite defensive and said the technical implementation was none of my business and I should butt out and accept what I am given.
I let it slide as he was getting controntational and it was only going to get more heated. I approached him again today to see if he'd mellowed. It seems not. A tyrannical outburst of four letter words came out of him. Positively foaming like a thing posessed. I had to ask him a few times to take it down a notch, which didn't help
Apparently the specs are all tulipe, the worst he's seen in 30 years, a kindergarten child could have done better yada yada yada. I ended the meeting.
A few hours later came an apology and then a polite list of questions on the specs which I was surprised he had to ask but were easy enough to field.
Interesting day at the office to say the least. Still I tipped him as the man for the job, and I still believe he is so will defend him to the hilt, but by ****ery if he'd start trading targetted questions and sql rather than blows we'd get a lot more done.
Anyone got any primadonna stories to share (non about me
)
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