Reply to: Software Room 101

[Mich the Tester]

+1. Seen a similar thing happen with QC licence procurement at large retail clientco. It's quite common for this to happen as it justifies their existence in appearing to negotiate better deals with suppliers where in reality it's the big suppliers that hold all the cards.

Yep, and the clientcos then hand them even more cards.

[redgiant]

Here's the one bit of the HP QC saga that makes me giggle;

clientco keeps running out of licenses but they can't just buy one more license, no, HP's policy is to sell licenses in blocks of 25, for which umpty thousand euros are charged. So two weeks ago, clientco's 'Process Improvement Manager', who is a cretin, decided he should 'negotiate' a discount with HP because clientco is a 'major customer'.

I told him that I'd seen one of the world's biggest publishers as well as the US's biggest company trying to negotiate with HP and getting nowhere, so he would be doing very well to get any movement from them at all. I also told him his negotiating position was just about zero, because HP know quite well that clientco has tens of millions of euros of work tied up in QC and an automated migration to another tool is damn near impossible if you don't have the powers of the allegedly omnipotent creator of the universe. Of course, he didn't listen, called up the HP account managerman and 'discussed' the issue. Results; no discount, but HP managed to sell him on site support for a 6 figure sum that he now has to justify to the CTO, who is not impressed, seeing as it would be cheaper to just buy a load more licenses.

How can someone be so naïve? He genuinely thinks that clientco’s use of the full functionality of a tool for very large projects puts him in a good negotiating position! Can he really not see that it’s the other way around? No he can’t because he’s a permie who’s never had to worry about inconveniences like creditors, invoices and so on. But FFS, someone gave him a degree in ’management’!

+1. Seen a similar thing happen with QC licence procurement at a previous large retail clientco. It's quite common for this to happen as it justifies the procurement managers existence in appearing to negotiate better deals with suppliers where in reality it's the big suppliers that hold all the cards.

[Mich the Tester]

If you sell a tool that 'supports multiple projects' then one of the most basic happy flow tests in your regression set must surely be 'verify that an object can be copied from one project to another'?

FFS, HP, get your bleeding act together or get your ******* useless tulipware out of my line of work.

[Mich the Tester]

Nope it will just be a bug fix "patch" release (to introduce new bugs)

WHS


wot a heap of tulipe

[eek]

Have HP installed some new 'features' then?

Nope it will just be a bug fix "patch" release (to introduce new bugs)

[bless 'em all]

Have HP installed some new 'features' then?

[Mich the Tester]

[vetran]

don't. I was told by Corporate oh we have super new discounts with Bangalore Telecom, I said well let me see them, I will compare with my current supplier. Oh no they said they are so special we can't show them to you.

I sent them a copy of current supplier and the best BT deal I had been offered that was 30% more than my current deal yet lower or the same as theirs. They contacted me in a panic asking how I had got such a cheap deal from BT.

They were going to roll out the massive discount across EMEA

Now why do those people not get 'managed out'?

[eek]

Here's the one bit of the HP QC saga that makes me giggle;

clientco keeps running out of licenses but they can't just buy one more license, no, HP's policy is to sell licenses in blocks of 25, for which umpty thousand euros are charged. So two weeks ago, clientco's 'Process Improvement Manager', who is a cretin, decided he should 'negotiate' a discount with HP because clientco is a 'major customer'.

I told him that I'd seen one of the world's biggest publishers as well as the US's biggest company trying to negotiate with HP and getting nowhere, so he would be doing very well to get any movement from them at all. I also told him his negotiating position was just about zero, because HP know quite well that clientco has tens of millions of euros of work tied up in QC and an automated migration to another tool is damn near impossible if you don't have the powers of the allegedly omnipotent creator of the universe. Of course, he didn't listen, called up the HP account managerman and 'discussed' the issue. Results; no discount, but HP managed to sell him on site support for a 6 figure sum that he now has to justify to the CTO, who is not impressed, seeing as it would be cheaper to just buy a load more licenses.

How can someone be so naïve? He genuinely thinks that clientco’s use of the full functionality of a tool for very large projects puts him in a good negotiating position! Can he really not see that it’s the other way around? No he can’t because he’s a permie who’s never had to worry about inconveniences like creditors, invoices and so on. But FFS, someone gave him a degree in ’management’!

When has management ever = common sense?

[Mich the Tester]

nope. They create a requirements sheet and pick the firm who ticked the most boxes regardless of how crap, convoluted or outright lying the ticks were.

Plus if HP use it it can't be that bad (can it).

Here's the one bit of the HP QC saga that makes me giggle;

clientco keeps running out of licenses but they can't just buy one more license, no, HP's policy is to sell licenses in blocks of 25, for which umpty thousand euros are charged. So two weeks ago, clientco's 'Process Improvement Manager', who is a cretin, decided he should 'negotiate' a discount with HP because clientco is a 'major customer'.

I told him that I'd seen one of the world's biggest publishers as well as the US's biggest company trying to negotiate with HP and getting nowhere, so he would be doing very well to get any movement from them at all. I also told him his negotiating position was just about zero, because HP know quite well that clientco has tens of millions of euros of work tied up in QC and an automated migration to another tool is damn near impossible if you don't have the powers of the allegedly omnipotent creator of the universe. Of course, he didn't listen, called up the HP account managerman and 'discussed' the issue. Results; no discount, but HP managed to sell him on site support for a 6 figure sum that he now has to justify to the CTO, who is not impressed, seeing as it would be cheaper to just buy a load more licenses.

How can someone be so naïve? He genuinely thinks that clientco’s use of the full functionality of a tool for very large projects puts him in a good negotiating position! Can he really not see that it’s the other way around? No he can’t because he’s a permie who’s never had to worry about inconveniences like creditors, invoices and so on. But FFS, someone gave him a degree in ’management’!

[eek]

The person who bought it for client co saw a powerpoint presentation on how good it was. Then found a new merc on his driveway and the keys to it on his doormat?

nope. They create a requirements sheet and pick the firm who ticked the most boxes regardless of how crap, convoluted or outright lying the ticks were.

Plus if HP use it it can't be that bad (can it).

[bless 'em all]

HP Quality Centre is now wasting my time again as you can't open two instances until we get 'patch 31'. You could before patch 30, but now I have a job of copying existing test cases from one project to another while logging out and logging back in, thus taking twice as long as necessary. There's a guy from HP on site 'helping' us all because clientco is sick to the back teeth of all this crap but they have stupidly made themselves dependent on it. The HP man is threatening to go home and leave us in the lurch if people keep saying nasty things about HP. Thing is, when I suggested that HP should get real life testers on real life projects to test Quality Centre, he got all defensive and said 'oh but we do test it; look that error message you're getting has obviously been tested!'

My point is that if the most basic functionality required for re-using tests between projects is broken, don't ******* release it!

Apparently now I have to re-install the client, which is quite time consuming with this clunky overweight tulipe. Ho hum, I can miss another deadline, push the blame to HP, and invoice. What a way to make software. WHY DO CLIENTCOS FALL FOR THIS OVERPRICED, INEFFICIENT, UNWIELDY, POORLY SUPPORTED CRAP? It makes western commercial operations look like a Soviet era tractor factory that consistently fails to achieve the 5 year plan.

Rant over, back to invoicing.

The person who bought it for client co saw a powerpoint presentation on how good it was. Then found a new merc on his driveway and the keys to it on his doormat?

[Cenobite]

Borland StarTeam. Enough said.

[Mich the Tester]

HP Quality Centre is now wasting my time again as you can't open two instances until we get 'patch 31'. You could before patch 30, but now I have a job of copying existing test cases from one project to another while logging out and logging back in, thus taking twice as long as necessary. There's a guy from HP on site 'helping' us all because clientco is sick to the back teeth of all this crap but they have stupidly made themselves dependent on it. The HP man is threatening to go home and leave us in the lurch if people keep saying nasty things about HP. Thing is, when I suggested that HP should get real life testers on real life projects to test Quality Centre, he got all defensive and said 'oh but we do test it; look that error message you're getting has obviously been tested!'

My point is that if the most basic functionality required for re-using tests between projects is broken, don't ******* release it!

Apparently now I have to re-install the client, which is quite time consuming with this clunky overweight tulipe. Ho hum, I can miss another deadline, push the blame to HP, and invoice. What a way to make software. WHY DO CLIENTCOS FALL FOR THIS OVERPRICED, INEFFICIENT, UNWIELDY, POORLY SUPPORTED CRAP? It makes western commercial operations look like a Soviet era tractor factory that consistently fails to achieve the 5 year plan.

Rant over, back to invoicing.

[darmstadt]