Jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday, but ...

Many years ago, I worked at a large government contractor that was trying to reach Capability Maturity Model Level 5. That standard defines a stringent systems development process, and all defense contractors were supposed to achieve it. I believe the Software Engineering Institute was in on the process of defining that standard.

As part of achieving Level 5, the contractor must be able to train its staffers in their methodology. Because I have teaching experience, I was chosen to attend the "Train the Trainer" session for the systems engineering course. The methodology and the course were developed by one of the company's most senior and best-respected engineers. Of course, he had his doctorate and loads of experience developing systems for years.

I hadn't forgotten the earlier joystick incident, and sometime toward the end of the course, when we covered the whole methodology, I told the doctor that it appeared that there was very little user involvement in the process. He told me that I was mistaken, because during the requirements phase, systems engineers interviewed users to determine what requirements they might have. He also pointed out that users were closely involved in the final acceptance testing.

I asked him why there couldn't be end-user reviews throughout the process to provide input. He replied that since they were involved in the final acceptance testing, that this was unnecessary. When I pointed that it could be years between the requirements-gathering phase and the acceptance testing, and that it is possible that things could change or that developers could misinterpret user requirements, the instructor told me that this wouldn't happen because the requirements would be written well, because the methodology is so strong. He also added that I probably didn't have experience on good projects. Long story short, I was informed the following week that I was not chosen to be a trainer, and the contractor continues to get hit for failing megacontracts even though it has such a strong methodology, according to the person who developed it, anyway.