in reply to Perl and Oracle Designer

I assume your naming conventions apply to things like table names or such....if so, you could store the STANDARDS in a table and use something like DBI to manage changes to the STANDARDS.

But....that is a cure for the symptom, not the problem and is a bit akin to turning up your radio so you don't hear the strange noise from the transmission

I would humbly suggest you meet with these folks, share with them the difficulties of change management in the environment they have created and come to an alignment on how to manage this system efficently moving forward.

The issue here is bad management practices...address that and save yourself the long-term grief.

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Re: Re: Perl and Oracle Designer
by tbone1 (Monsignor) on May 12, 2003 at 11:57 UTC
    The issue here is bad management practices...address that and save yourself the long-term grief.

    And of course, the management likes the STANDARDS thing because they think it makes them look professional and looks like they are doing something. Nevermind that we spend more time conforming to arbitrary standards than we do developing money-making software. *sigh*

    I think Al McGuire was right; the world is run by C students.

    --
    tbone1
    Ain't enough 'O's in 'stoopid' to describe that guy.
    - Dave "the King" Wilson

[reply]
      Actually, I think it is the Peter Principle at work.

      However, you have a responsibilty to your company to point out the inaccuracy of these assumptions.

      The trick will be to do so without seeming to be a pain in the posterior.

      Is there anyone else in your organization who sides with you on this issue?
      If so, perhaps you could approach management, in a kind way, to let them know you are concerned about how these bad pracitices are impacting productivity and the bottom line.

[reply]

        Nevermind that we spend more time conforming to arbitrary standards than we do developing money-making software.

      If you can quantify this, and then translate it into dollars lost versus dollars saved, you'd have a case to bring to management to at least reduce the frequency of changes if not reduce the number of changes altogether.

      Example:

      • how many minutes per day do you spend making changes to conform to standards?
      • how many minutes are spent by the committee reviewing and changing the standards?
      • how many people are in the committee?
      1. measure these items over the course of one month.
      2. compute the number of hours
      3. compute the amount of money spent by multiplying the hours by the average hourly wage (you'll have to figure this out yourself)
      4. multiply this number by 12 to get the yearly estimated cost
      here's the kicker, ask them how much of this money being spent is benefiting the customer!

      HTH

      --
      hiseldl
      What time is it? It's Camel Time!

[reply]

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