Re: Programing requirements - Guidelines - CodeRevisionandExternal Programmers - Am I wrong

On Thu, 07 Mar 2013, at 12:23:10, Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Back when I was doing temp office work, I was in a division at a large
company here that used a 36 - they had a contract guy there. One day he
did not return from lunch - or maybe I saw him escorted out summarily.

Turned out he had different names for source from those of the compiled
objects - something like that. Job security, right? Maybe for the guy
who got to clean it up!!

It is not Friday but one more for the horror story collection ...

One time when working for a consulting house we were called in to clean up the mess left by a previous contracting group who had been fired for exceeding the budget - significantly.

Turned out that during development they used a COPY directive (COBOL) for all input and output definitions (this was pre-externally defined files). But once the program was approved to move to system test they copied the definitions directly into the production source. Yes - you guessed it - they were being paid per line of code delivered to system test. Of course errors were found and fixed during the test phase. But this just caused more errors since every fix that wasn't reflected in every other source member that used that file definition blew up later. Consequently the more the client tested the software the worse it got. The client had no idea what they had been doing - and yes - there had been a familial relationship in the original choice of contractor.

When we finally finished the project - which didn't take long once the COPYs were reinstated! - there were less than 50% of the lines of code they had been paid for.


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com