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Shark Tank

28.08.2006
-- Developer pilot fish turns the specs for a new application into a schedule, and within a few days, he hears back from the manager. "We don't have five months to do the work; we've only got three," he tells fish. All the features you specified will take five months to develop, fish points out. "But five months is too long. We've already told the customer we'll deliver in three months." Says fish, "I replied, 'You can put three months down on your plan if you want, but the work is still going to take five.' He looked at me, huffed, and then started removing features so we could do the work in three months."

-- Junior-level IT pilot fish has been repeatedly told not to comment on senior staffers' actions or performance. So he just watches as another staffer and a vendor guy set up a new UPS for a mission-critical server. Staffer says, "OK, it's time to test it" -- and unplugs the server from the UPS. "I bit my tongue but said to myself, 'I don't think that's the appropriate way to test a UPS,'" says fish. "At the outbrief, I was asked why I didn't speak up. I guess everything really does roll downhill."

-- Office manager for this small rail-car company calls pilot fish to complain that she hears voices over the newly installed wireless network. Fish knows that's impossible, so he just power-cycles the access point and tells her to call if it happens again. "Two hours later, she called," says fish. "Sure enough, in her office I heard a voice say, 'Switching is complete, we can roll." I looked out and saw a train stopped next to the building. The rail crew's radio was being picked up by the cheap speakers on her PC."

-- User's keyboard generates random characters, and when support pilot fish examines it, he gets a lapful of water. "The user had as surprised a look as I had," says fish. "I was about to ask her what she spilled but then noticed a wet spot on the ceiling. Apparently, rain from the weekend had leaked onto the keyboard. I replaced the keyboard, moved the user to a drier area and called maintenance to repair the roof."

-- Pilot fish notices two programmers staring at a screen. Fred: "Yeah, I don't know what causes the bug, but if I run the debugger enough times, it goes away." Barney: "Well then, we just need to make sure to run the debugger a lot." Fred: "I wonder what causes it." Barney: "At least we have a solution now."

Sharky wonders what true tale of IT life you have to tell. Send it to sharky@computerworld.com (mailto:harky@computerworld.com), and you'll score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it. And check out Sharky's blog, browse the Sharkives and sign up for Shark Tank home delivery atcomputerworld.com/sharky (http://computerworld.com/sharky).