Oh Dear (TM) - Turned down my extension

[Lucifer Box]

It is a rare consultancy indeed that after the initial fact finding exercise says, "all looks okay to me, guv, carry on as you are".

[WageSlave]

It is a rare consultancy indeed that after the initial fact finding exercise says, "all looks okay to me, guv, carry on as you are".

Exactly, and one of the main reasons why I advocate that first phase analysis is handled by a different consultancy.
Thanks to the advice I have given to clients in the past, my chance of ever working with a certain montrous French IT company is well and truly shot.

[MarillionFan]

What

Well I am still here at 6.50, getting the scheduling system to run reports for tonight.

They have changed the specifications 4 times in a day because the client has kicked their arse and their bricking it. All the perms have gone home and they couldnt help because out of a team of 6 none of them had any technical skills. One asked me what a DLL was and I asked her if she new what an EXE was and she said No!!!!! One asked if they had a data warehouse then would all the clients get SQL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No-one has any database skills. I ask for a SQL Server DBA they get me an Oracle Unix bloke who says he doesnt know how it works.

I was hired to do Crystal Reports and guide them towards a solution. I told them straight away they needed a data warehouse or back end storage system as they wanted to produce so many trending reports. Over 150 cuts of data.

They got a geezer with a spreadsheet to write macros to extract it. He did it wrong and we did it right. But every day I have to explain why ours are right and justify every number. They changed the specs so much we have had to do the stuff in spreadsheets - but we cannot automate because they change the specs so much. Now they want the spreadsheets automated because he spends every day running it.

Now it turns out they dont like the numbers it produces (it shows them in a bad light) so they are now manually adjusting the reports daily - fudging the lot with no audit trail - and still no-one in the team can do anything correctly because they cannot even use the CRM system.

So they now want all of the reports to use the wrong field in the database because it looks right . The development team told them its wrong, I told them its wrong but some manager thinks its right cause it shows them succeeding / not failing.

You should see the looks on their faces when I said enough was enough. Bricking it.

[Lucifer Box]

Don't forget to leave a few furniture brochures.

[stackpole]

Re: they dont like the numbers it produces

Marillion, that is magnificent. I'd love to put together a book of stories like that.

By the way, who is it - EDS?

[AtW]

Marillion, that is magnificent. I'd love to put together a book of stories like that.

stackpole, who is that guy standing next to you with hand on your shouder in the avatar?

[stackpole]

stackpole, who is that guy standing next to you with hand on your shouder in the avatar?

Dickie Valentine.

[SandyDown]

hahaha

<<They have changed the specifications 4 times in a day because the client has kicked their arse and their bricking it. All the perms have gone home and they couldnt help because out of a team of 6 none of them had any technical skills. One asked me what a DLL was and I asked her if she new what an EXE was and she said No!!!!! One asked if they had a data warehouse then would all the clients get SQL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No-one has any database skills. I ask for a SQL Server DBA they get me an Oracle Unix bloke who says he doesnt know how it works.
>>


Hahaha... this was exactly the same situation I was in when I worked in an Accidenture team, man I had to do the whole of the team work, there was 5-6 of us but I was the only techie there, all the others were Cuntsuntalt , I tasked one of them who was getting paid loads more than me, and was appointed as my helper to do a couple of HTML pages, I explained the task to him, and after 2 hours of explaining he asked me ' so what's a HTML tag' and no he wasn't joking, even a 9 year old knows HTML nowadays..... FFS even ATW figured out HTML !!!!!

And the opposite of your situation they needed an Oracle DBA so they appointed a VB6 develper who knows a little about SQL, to do the oracle DBA job ...go figure !!

Jeeeeees my spne shivers when I remember that project !!!!

[MarillionFan]

Where

"there was 5-6 of us but I was the only techie there, all the others were Cuntsuntalt " - Logica - and it is exactly the same.

It has been explained to me by the own staff that what they do is get the chepest bums on seats and charge them out at full consultancy rates. Someone said if they can do it manually and charge - they will.

They take people off the 'bench'. Ie. Internal job market and if you're on the bench its the equivalent of having to choose the fat kid to play football.

Ten O clock I got in last night.

Questions this week have been?

What is VB? VBA? VBScripting?
SQL is a reporting package right?
What is an EXE? DLL?
Just write an report, save it every day to CSV and then copy the data back into the new report each day. Yeh. Its easy (Trend Reporting)
I cannot open the Excel file you sent me. A. Thats because it's a Word Document I sent you.
What is you do again?

[Lucifer Box]

Exactly, and one of the main reasons why I advocate that first phase analysis is handled by a different consultancy.

Spot on, Slave. Did the same myself on a gig at a telco - made it absolutely clear from the outset to the initial consultancy that they were not going to be invited to tender on whatever their proposals turned out to be. It seemed to focus their minds wonderfully knowing that their work was, in effect, going to be audited by whoever was awarded the implementation contract.