Dysfunctional Definitions
- Agile– Approach that jumps through hoops to avoid providing a project forecast.
- Broken Windows– What over-worked developers create when driving through the code-base late at night.
- Business Analyst– Person who sweeps problems back out from under the rug for their customer.
- Deliverable– A measurable output of work, completed after the scheduled date.
- Developer– Person who creates solutions to unidentified problems.
- Innovation– What happens when managers fail to do their jobs correctly.
- Intellectual Property– Secret Sauce. Used to achieve the impossible. Alternately, used to prevent other companies from achieving the valuable.
- Iron Triangle– The rationalizing tool for reducing quality to meet the schedule.
- Meeting– An opportunity to stop all useful work and take a break. Effectiveness is proportional to the number of attendees.
- Offshoring– Going to the ends of the earth to help the developers, then finding their replacements there. (IP “borrowed” from Dispair, Inc)
- Product Manager– Person who identifies problems that apply to all customers except yours.
- Quality– The feng shui of software.
- Review– A meeting where all previous work is discarded and new work is defined. Followed invariably by another review.
- Rework– Replacing broken windows (see Broken Windows)
- Risk– A means by which reality is infused into projects.
- Schedule– A perfect prediction of the future and all project events. Schedules never change.
- Scope Creep– Theoretical event that my friend’s brother’s cousin’s neighbor once heard about happening on a big project.
- Software Salesman– Person who reserves weekday tee-times for CIOs and purchasing managers.
- Status Report– A transmogrification of reality to conform to the schedule (see Schedule).
- Timebox- A five gallon hat, into which ten gallons of work must be stuffed.
- Waterfall– Approach that maximizes the ability to plan to fail to deliver the right software.
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