Autopilot

Twice Warmed

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 03:44:00 +0000

Good Lord.

2016 is finally over, and while everyone is sick of "OMG-2016-is-the-worst" comments - it's hard to get past what a crap year it has been.

The GOP selected a narcissistic con man as their nominee, the nation voted for Hillary, and the de-facto gerrymandering of the electoral college selected Trump as our next president. Which is not to say the victory is illegitimate, it is just the exclamation point following the phrase "the Electoral College is a f*&king mess." A margin of less than 100,000 in 5 states is enough to give the election to a candidate who lost the popular vote by just under three million votes.

But you knew that already.

The GOP will get rewarded for sitting on their hands while Scalia's seat went unfilled. An absolute disgrace from any angle - and the incoming president will have the ability to fill up their cabinet and the lower federal bench free of any filibuster. Great job, everyone.

And the tweeter in chief regularly trolls the planet with some new act of foolishness, sent from their smartphone.

It just makes you ill.

And - to read the headlines - pretty much every celebrity died in 2016. I was surprised how affected I was by the death of Carrie Fisher. That just got to me as so unfair, she was roaring into her own - fearlessly giving the finger to pretty much anyone she wanted.

And Pulse, and the Bastile Day attack, and...

Jesus, what the hell, anyway?

Work flattened me the past few months. Product Actual is on the hook for a great many things, and they are watching the sand run out of the glass. I'd been struggling to get my Ru beta participants to validate the data - and not having much luck.

Literally the last day before Christmas break, Hockey1 and I discovered multiple issues with the Ru datasets. We will have 1 week to define the problem for development and dev will have one week to fix it, or we will miss the release window. I went out the door scheduling meetings for Data and Thespian on the day we all get back - like we'll remember who we are after vacation...

Ugh.

But soaking up vacation has been good. Mom came up, stayed with Jen up until Christmas, then was with us until New Year's Eve. E's sister and her husband came to stay with us for a few glorious days. After the rush of Christmas, we all had some quality hang out time. I whipped through the first four books of The Expanse, and forgot what day it was. A lot of good food was made and consumed, the dog was loving the company.

Good times.

New Year's Eve - the boy has exhausted his video game eyes and wants to have a friend over - I'm dropping Mom off at the airport, E's sister and her husband are heading home, and the furnace is cycling oddly in the morning.

I go down to look at the furnace, but really - what the hell am I even looking for? Nevermind what I would be able to do if I saw something. It passes, and the day goes on. Mom's off to Charlotte, E and the dog are off to scent training, and little e is off to an overnight.

The boy and his bud play a cool evolution game that we keep getting the rules wrong for - but ultimately have a good time. The Boy hammers us using a rule we got wrong, then we set up a replay with the correct rule and he buries us all yet again. I'm a bit glad to see him displaying some tactical aptitude, but sad to see his friend get crushed at their new game.

Mid game, there's a clunk and a sizzle and suddenly the house smells of ozone.

This, I know immediately, is not a good thing. But again, rushing downstairs just confirms that the parts of the furnace that make one kind of noise (the burners) are noising along properly - and the parts that make the other kind of noise (the blower) are not.

Watching the thermostat on the Nest, it is telling me that the temp is set to 68 and the measured temp in the room is 70 - which is utter bullsh!t. I have two other thermometers within three feet of the nest and both are reading 64. Twenty minutes later, the Nest is telling me the room is 71 degrees.

It is absolutely not that temperature.

I hit the kill switch on the furnace, wait a few minutes, then power it up again. Then I restart the Nest. When it comes back, it has regained its sanity and now is telling me the house is at 64 degrees. Better, but the furnace still isn't doing anything about that.

The boy's friend heads home and we get ourselves set for bed. I consider calling an HVAC pro, but

-it's New Year's Effing Eve...

It's 21 degrees out, the house will hold heat until the morning, and there's no way on earth this gets better tonight.

Also, I'm getting a sore throat. Nice.

I get into bed and tell the Nest to just run the fan. The Nest shows it's trying, but absolutely nothing happens. We're hosed.

In the morning, I'm full blown sick, and the house is at 61 degrees. I test dialing the Nest up to 68 and watch the controls respond, I can hear the furnace burn - but no air is moving.

Time to bite the bullet.

I call an HVAC service. On New Year's Day. The answering service takes my number, and tells me a technician will call me.

An hour later, they do. They take the usual steps to inform me that I've asked for service during a holiday that is also a Sunday, so I've pretty much boned myself every way I can. Surcharge on the base fee, and any work is at a 25% higher rate.

Awesome.

I tell the guy to come anyway, because I figure if this requires ordering a part, I want to start the order today, not two days from now when the holiday and its Monday alternate are past.

HVAC dude shows up, is brusque, and announces that my furnace is full of "all the wrong parts."
I remember having it serviced by our remodelers who shorted it out and had to fix it - I would believe they totally screwed up-

"You see, all these parts are for a two stage furnace, and this here," HVAC guy pats my dead furnace "is a single stage furnace, pure and simple."

HVAC guy is wrong. First thing we had done on the house after we moved in was to replace the motor on the furnace because it wasn't shifting from stage one to stage two. I know this.

I say this.

HVAC guy is all, "Oh, now I see the [floonium particle/tachyon particle] that means its a two stage."

Which now has me full of confidence in this man, but I afford them the respect of a professional. "I'll get out of your way, let me know if you need anything."

Ten minutes later, HVAC guy comes up and (I swear, I could hear this speech in my mind before they said it). "You need a new blower, but I don't have it on my truck. I could see if we could get it, but it won't be before Thursday, on account of tomorrow being the observed holiday. Cost is about a thousand bucks, and we're at the point where you might prefer to put that thousand towards a new furnace."

Which would run..?

"About $3,500 installed. I could have a sales person here later today to discuss the details. We might have you up and running in a day or two. I can get you some space heaters."

And at this point, I've had it with HVAC guy. He might be a pro, and he's right that my furnace is old, and I should consider replacing it - but it's a 95 percent efficient furnace with a broken part. I am not jumping into the $3,500 pool today, even if he's right.

I tell him I need to sort out what I want to do with E, and he whips out his paperwork and charges me $170. I pay and sign and he's gone before I realize that he's given me a quote for the repairs, but I don't know if he's checking to see when they could get this part. And other than "Blower" I have no detail on what part is needed. Is it the motor, the module, the fan? All of it?

I call the company back and ask them to check on both of those details: when they can have the part, and what part it is. Unlikely that anyone else local would have the part, but I'd like to have the option to ask other providers. I've paid my money, I'd like to get something tangible other than a bill.

They never call back.

So, I go out back, haul in the old board from E's old flower beds - and saw each in half. E's going to get little E back from her overnight, I ask her to hit any store that is open from some firewood.

And then we fire up the wood stove.

Twenty one degrees in the morning, but its warming a bit. House is just under sixty. A few minutes later, we have a roaring fire. Hour after that, the family room is 68 degrees.

Hour after that, the first floor is 68 degrees.

It ain't great, but its doable. We'll hang in until we have better HVAC choices, and until we get a shot at the repair - but we will go primitive if we have to. We are not smoke jumping into $3,500 worth of anything. Wood is cheap.

Always liked that stove anyway. There's something about making a fire, keeping it going.

So, 2016 sucked, and it's last stab at me has me gunk-sick and wrung out, pitching logs through the side door of a wood stove to heat the house...

Over the stove door, there is a single word:

Yeah.

The past year was a sh!tshow...but it's over. And the pouting time is over, too.

Sh!t's gotta get done.

Of Trump, Locker Rooms, and Woulds vs Haves

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 17:48:00 +0000

In the wake of Trump's Access Hollywood video, I've been trying to figure out which of Trump's defenders are more ridiculous: those who say Trump's comments are indefensible but still support him, or those who maintain his comments are no big deal.

The Giuliani vs the Walsh:
Which is worse?

This idiot
- [Sexual assault] is what he's talking about... and ...men at times talk like that:

...or this idiot:

A man who talks dirty about women or a woman who tries to destroy the life of rape victims to protect her abusing husband?
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 9, 2016

If women are so outraged by Trump's dirty talk, then who the hell bought the 80 million copies of "Fifty Shades Of Grey?"

Grow up.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 8, 2016

Both of these fools are leaning on two flavors of misdirection: dirty talk (Hey, stop being such a prude!) and the locker room argument (Hey, when a bunch of guys get together, they sometimes sexually objectify women).

Both of these are complete and utter bullshit. First off, as has been pointed out by wiser folks than myself, Trump could have used purely medical terms to describe the anatomies he was violating and it would change nothing about the central offenses he is admitting. Namely, he has - repeatedly - made sexual contact with women without their consent. Moreover, he asserts that his fame allows him to do this without suffering consequences.

And, lest there be any confusion about his mental state over this conduct, "and when you're a star, they let you do it" tells you he knows this conduct is wrong, but he can get away with it.

You can do anything.

It's the locker room/guy talk argument that is truly offensive, though. And this isn't the "not all men" outrage of Chuck Todd or other self serving hogwash. Engaging with this argument on that level is accepting the misdirection that is its central goal.

The takedown it deserves (at least) is to point out the two key differences between the kind of locker room banter Trump wants to hide behind, and what he was actually doing.

Let's take an example of locker room banter and compare it with Trump, shall we? Say a group of guys who know each other are using crass language to talk about women they know/have heard of. Man, did you see Alycia in homeroom today? She is fine... I would so want to get into that.

The first key difference is one of familiarity - and this is clearly the lesser point to be made, but I think it matters. It is one thing to bring up sexual topics with a group of men you know and hang out with on a regular basis - and the fact that they are friends doesn't absolve them of bad behavior. But in Trump's case he is not meeting up with some of his buddies from the club and talking smack - he is not tight with Billy Bush - the guy's a freaking talk show host, and most of the people on the bus are going to be strangers to him. Trump is not wandering into lewd topics with a group of friends, he is introducing himself to a group of people he does not know as - "This is what you should know about me."

He is boasting in front of an audience, because he believes what he's saying will impress them. I've been in many social situations where guys new to a group feel like they need to advertise their heterosexuality by launching into crass talk - FYI, I'm straight, just so you know - but Trump is way past that. Most insecure hetero guys will fly the flag once and move on. No, Trump wants to earn the admiration of his new social circle, and he's convinced that lengthy discussions of sexual conquest and his impunity is the way to do it.

But the capstone to the awful is the item central to all the outrage - and rightly so. Trump is voluntarily describing things he claims to have actually done. I've assaulted women - and I get away with it. That is horrid beyond description and a universe apart from the "I would..." or "If I could.." locker room bullsh!t of your garden variety male. Trump is saying "I have done this..." and no amount of pretend is going to make that the same as some jackoff at the club rhapsodizing about how the waitress had a nice butt.

This admission - this boast - about actual behavior is what separates Trump's transgression from anything else in the news cycle. He did this, he's freaking proud of it, and he wants these guys to know it, so they are impressed by how he can do bad things and get away with it.

That is who the GOP is running for president - in his unvarnished glory.

And no, Donald, you cannot apologize "if people were offended," you f*cking monster. YOU CANNOT APOLOGIZE FOR OUR REACTIONS TO HOW HORRIBLE YOU ARE. You can only apologize for what you've done and said. If you had any humanity, you've have conceded the race already - but we know that's never going to happen.

The die hards in Trumpworld are trying mightily to minimize and distract - but there is just no way to avoid the cold truth: in 2005, Donald Trump told us exactly who he was.

This election cannot punish him or his defenders enough.

(Name) [x] Inactive

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 00:53:00 +0000

Just keep telling yourself, you get to see whales...

I'm neck deep in a government spreadsheet from hell. A regulatory data barf, courtesy of one of the brighter corners in our bureaucracy. NerdHaven's app has to be in synch with the valueset in one of this spreadsheet's many worksheets.

The spreadsheet details how our 2000 plus data elements have changed this year. Each element has four values, each could have changed. Some elements have ALL four of their values change.

Also, the spreadsheet does not separate the old values and the new values. If a field has changed from

Old Foo

New Foo

the value's cell is written as

~~Old~~ New Foo

Which makes me want to stab someone.

Oh, and there's no primary key. Because: of course.

Some elements are being replaced by new elements that are being added this year. And they are adding over 1,400 elements this year. It is my job to detail all the field changes for the devs, spell out the 1,400 new values (and look up an additional value from outside references so these new values won't break our other features that rely on this fifth field), list the elements that will be made inactive, and list which inactive elements will be replaced by other elements.

It is soul crushing work. A person with better programming chops would probably be able to slice and dice the file better than I did. Faster. I do all the Excel-fu I can think of and it takes me almost two weeks. I don't know how the QA effort will start, and I already feel sorry for whoever pulls QA duty on this gig.

* * *

Whales... think about the whales...

* * *

I'm getting this work done in support of a feature called RuRa. Well, actually just the Ra portion of RuRa. Sprint's been working the Ru portion and has been wading through all kinds of data hell to build the feature in compliance with what the government demands. NerdHaven's app aggregates data from clients and gives it back in useful ways. Since client data varies (sometimes dramatically) building features with hard data requirements is...challenging.

Sprint has been getting it done. They work with Data in our west coast office, and Data is borderline OCD when it comes to getting the business intelligence right. Together with Pirate & Thespian, Sprint was well positioned to land this beast.

But I can tell Sprint has hated most of the project. Gumby has been hands off in the past, but deadlines are approaching and they cannot help themselves. Weekly checkins, over the shoulder advice, and lots of emails ending with "Thoughts?" I think Gumby had made a deliberate effort to back off at the beginning. Sprint has a reputation for efficiency and professionalism, I know Gumby had wanted to respect that. But where Sprint is known for being fiercely independent, Gumby is positively clingy.

It is a bad mix.

Sprint chafes under Gumby's endless questions and meddling - Gumby is irritated by the feeling of being left out of the loop. When Gumby is called to account by higher ups (the thing Gumby fears above all) they don't have the answers. Each complains to me about the other, and while I sympathize with both - my head is with Sprint. Gumby has stayed away for too long and is overcorrecting.

Talking with Gumby, I am struck by how little they know about the Ru project. They are the Project Manager and design elements I've known about for months are new information to them. I have spent very little time with Sprint about Ru, because very little of it affects my Ra project - but by simple osmosis, I've managed to keep current. Gumby? They know the regulations, but not the design. Which gives them enough information to drive Sprint up a wall with "What about this?" questions, week after week.

With most of the Ru feature built, Sprint is spooling up to put the feature into Beta. I'm head down on Ra and its looming deadlines when I start getting invited to Ru beta sessions. On these, I'm absolutely clueless. I don't know the setup requirements or the goals for the session. I wanted to be a fly on the wall for these - and I'm glad Sprint's invited me - so I can watch the Ru feature in action. It has nearly identical UI to Ra, so lessons learned in the Ru Beta will help my design work.

Which is why it seems odd that I get an invite from a rep to participate in an Ru beta session with Gumby. Sprint is not in the invite. Which I think nothing of, because Sprint is absolutely going to be there, it's their project. But I replay to the rep and say "Sprint's driving the bus on this," basically to say 'hey, don't expect me to do much in this one, I'm an observer."

But later, I'm on IM with Sprint and find out that no, in fact, Sprint has not been invited into the Ru beta. Which makes absolutely no sense. I forward my invite to Sprint and ask Gumby about it. It ends up with Sprint being invited and running the session, but something was seriously odd.

Shortly after that I was in a meeting with Gumby where I was asked about taking a larger role in the Ru betas. Which I said I was fine with, but made it clear that this was Sprint's show if they wanted it. If Sprint wanted out, I'd be happy to help - but I wasn't going to waltz into their beta uninvited.

This was all kinds of awkward. Gumby used to be my boss, and now they were the project manager for both Sprint's Ru feature and my Ra feature. They do get a say in lots of things that affect these features. but if they want a personnel change, they need to take it up with Product Actual. I don't get a say, hell, Sprint doesn't get a say either. If Product Actual says "you do this work," that's what we do. Gumby asking me to budge into Sprint's beta smells bad. We end the meeting with me reiterating that I'll help Sprint if that's what Sprint wants, but that's about it.

About a week later, Gumby, Sprint and I are in a meeting where Gumby asks the two of us who will be running the Ru betas. I clam up and let Sprint answer, and I get a pointed look from Gumby when I do. Sprint (who I think was surprised by the question) takes a moment to spool up, but answers that they will continue to run the Ru beta. Which is a relief to me. Sprint knows their stuff, and if they wanted out I would worry why.

Sprint was recently given a horrid project I'll call Notables. And if ever there was a project that would make you clear the decks, its this one. Sprint did 20 rounds with it early in their NerdHaven tenure, and any mention of it causes groans from pretty much anyone in the know. Project Actual had asked me to help out on it weeks before, but changed their mind and gave it to Sprint.

While I was genuinely relieved, I was too ignorant about how bad Notables was to appreciate the bullet I'd dodged. Sprint knew better - and I was afraid they would have to bail out of Ru to focus on this new beast. But Sprint was up for Ru and Notables - which meant that they were their old self. Kicking butt and getting it done, challenges be damned.

With the Ru beta thing settled, I tied down the spreadsheet work and beat it to death with a shovel. Then started slogging through the pile of Ra work I'd pretty much been ignoring. This one piece of the project was just a mental block, and I'd been working around the edges for a month. With the spreadsheet work done, suddenly I could find a way through. In about a week, I had the bulk of my Ra work slotted for technical review, the last step before RFD. I was on fire.

* * *

A Monday.
I meet TierI (our ace customer rep) in the breakroom to discuss caffeine addiction. Then clock through some shop talk with the devs. I gotta get some input from Red on something and we're in the middle of talking when I get a text.

It's from Product Actual:

Hi. Can you come find me when you have a minute?

Uhhhh...

I must have been in a total fog at the time, because my only thought at the time was, I wonder if they are in the old product office? Product Actual is based out of state an only comes into our office every few weeks ago. When they do, they use the old product office.

See what I mean? A total fog.

Not: Hey, I wonder why Product Actual is town?
Not: The boss is asking to meet with me out of the blue, wonder why?

Nada.

I just marched off towards the old product office.

When they asked me to close the door is when it hit me. Uhhh...

Again, though - the first thing in my head was: I'm betting that the Ra project is getting benched. All that work is going in the crapper.

Product Actual never beats around the bush. One of the things I really like about them. You get the real from Actual.

"This is going to be another one of those bad days."

!!! There is a second to absorb this, and the sinking feeling starts.

"I've had to lay off Gumby. There will be others in this office getting RIFed."

(RIF. Reduction In Force. Yet another acronym for firing people.)

"The west coast office will not have its lease renewed. All the west coast staff will be offered the opportunity to work remotely."

Actual tells me that no one else in UX group is affected. But (per policy) there will be no formal list of those affected.

Yet again, NerdHaven staff will walk the halls trying to figure out who is here and who is gone.

Not at their desk. RIFed? or PTO?

Sprint is safe- and when I get a hold of them they tell me that the west coast office's only QA resource had resigned that morning. The west coast office staff had been savaged in the last RIF, now they were thinned again. Oh, and their office would close in May.

Sprint sounded absolutely gutted.

There's really no way to end those kinds of conversations. We sign off with the obvious promise: Let me know if you hear anything definite.

And then you walk back through the office in slo mo. You want to check in with your favorite people, see if they're okay - but you don't dare linger. HockeyOne isn't at their desk, HockeyTwo was let go in the last bloodletting. No way they got rid of HockeyOne.

Metrics is not at their desk, but you know they were out on PTO. Right? And just like that, you're unsure again. I try the CorpWorld method from Black Wednesday, but our IT isn't as draconian, so email status is no help. I try IM.

Gumby offline update is the marker for when heads had started to roll. Anyone offline with a similar timestamp is a possibility: a quick scan shows SpecialK, Branding, Cure, and...TierI.

Somehow I know that TierI is on the list, but it is a total shock all the same. TierI was one of the folks who seemed to come with the place. Easygoing with the clients, reasonable, funny...

Can't be.

Data pings me and we compare notes. They know about a person in contracts on the west coast. I tell them about two sales people I've heard of. I don't want to spread rumors, so only the stuff I know gets passed. I'm all but certain about TierI, but I don't say anything - I could be wrong.

* * *

Olympus holds an all staff meeting to lay out the situation. One staffer asks the obvious question: Are we going to do this again in the next three months? Olympus says the same thing they said last time: "We don't plan on having to do this again." Which leaves everyone unsatisfied. But really, what can Olympus say? "I swear on a stack of all that is holy that we will not have another RIF this year - unless the situation changes."

* * *

The week after, some of the casualties are known.

In our project tracking software, former employees still display on historical documents, but with a suffix indicating their status:

TierI [x] Inactive
Branding [x] Inactive
Epro [x] Inactive
...

SpecialK and the Cure are safe. HockeyOne and Metrics are okay as well. Oh, thank God.

Morale is absolutely in the sh!tter. Everyone is fed up. NerdHaven had just had our company outing (which I'd missed) - which is usually a good time with good food. Not two days after a team building exercise, we do layoffs. Genius, that.

I'm trying to nail down all the work for the Ru project prior to going on vacation. Actual wanted Sprint to focus on Notables, so I was given the remainder of Sprint's Ru and the beta. Sprint was behind it, or at least being a professional about being asked to focus on Notables full time. With Gumby gone, what they'd wanted has come to pass anyway - for totally different reasons. Sprint will ride shotgun until they're sure I'm not going to faceplant - then dive into the unholy mess that is Notables.

The vacation is a hell of a thing - going off to Alaska to see glaciers and whales. Should be freaking awesome - assuming I live long enough to get packed and get my sh!t together enough to leave.

Mom is in town, fretting about all the details and basically taking over all the work E and I are too frazzled to do. I literally don't know how we would have gotten the kids ready to travel without her.

I'm trying to squeeze runs to the store into my newly freed lunch hours when I get what looks like a meeting reminder on my phone. It's a 1:1 with Actual.

Not good.

But then I'm like - Wait, our regular 1:1s keep getting rescheduled. This is just Actual finding a time that works for-

BUZZZZZ!

It's a text. From Sprint.

Hey there

I'm in the parking lot at Target. Full sun, struggling to see the screen, but I don't need to read it.

Sprint is leaving.

They ask if I've spoken to Actual yet. Which is all but confirmation of...

I just resigned

I'm in the middle of the street and stand there blocking traffic. Seeing those words means there is no escape. This is happening. The best UXer we have at NerdHaven has finally had it.

I get honked back to reality by some helpful man in a truck. Sprint gave notice, so they'll leave two days after I go out on vacation. They've got every reason to go. They're getting a job at a big firm where UXDir went (but not working for them). Gumby drove Sprint up a wall, a bunch of their friends were let go, then they were given Notables... I mean, if you weren't looking after the layoffs, you'd have to be out of your mind. Sprint hung in longer than most anyone would have.

I say what I can manage, but there's really no way to cover it. Sprint was a class act, the person who made things get done on the west coast - oh, and they were a great person to work with.

How did we get here?

When I joined NerdHaven, UX was eight: UXDir, The Professor, Data, Heater, Noddy, Sprint, Runner and me.

Today, Sprint handed over their meetings in Outlook, so we could keep the same room reservations. One of them was the UX team meeting.

Data still works at NerdHaven, but left the UX group, so here's the invite list:

Red
Dash
murph

* * *

So, over a week ago, I found a bug. It's part of an addition to Arwafn that Gumby prioritized to fill dev capacity. It wasn't supposed to be in the release, and now it's blown up into three more bugs two days before a software release. A junior dev screwed the pooch, gave their work to a junior QA who did the same, and now we are faced with the damning choice of rescheduling the release or shipping a broken feature.

I have client meetings to set up for beta - I have to do knowledge transfer to Red re my Ru work in case it comes up while I'm out.

I have no time to give Sprint a proper sendoff, I'm barely packed, my signature project is back in the ditch, and I'm flailing to just get a list of what I need to do before I go. There's no chance it will actually get done - I just need to have some hope of tracking it for when I get back, or if someone has questions while I'm out.

So.
Effing.
Done.

* * *

But I'll get to see whales...

Despite having had f*%k all to do with this, they've gotta fix all this.

I hope they are up to it.

Anyone Can Be Replaced

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 03:04:00 +0000

The week after NerdHaven's layoffs, Dragonman met me in the hallway.

"I've got some bad news for you."

Here we go.

He tells me that I'll have to organize next year's charity run. The one Runner had been organizing over the past two years.

I'm relieved, and say so. "I can only handle so much bad news at a time. Doing next year's run? Yeah, I can deal with that."

Dragonman plows ahead with the rest of their news, "-because I've put in my notice. My last day is the 17th."

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Dragonman is the team lead of the Dragon team. Dragon is kickass in all sorts of ways - more so because they have a great leader.

Dragonman is one of those types of people who transform a workplace. They are extremely competent, whip-smart, and have a great sense of humor. Like Portal, Dragonman excels at cutting through the interpersonal and business bullsh!t to solve problems and get sh!t done.

After recovering from the gutshot, I wish Dragonman well. They are sure to do great wherever they go. They say the recent layoffs had nothing to do with their departure, they were looking for work closer to home - and found something that is practically down the road from their house. Even if the layoffs were a factor in their departure, Dragonman is too much of a pro to pour gas on the fire on the way out.

I will miss them.

NerdHaven will miss them. Nobody is irreplaceable, but trying to list the things Dragonman did for NerdHaven (and did well) is pretty mind boggling. Dragon works on a system that is mission critical for a huge portion of the business... it just...

Ugh.

* * *

The next day, I'm in our UX meeting, reflecting on how there used to be seven of us and a director. Now there are three FTEs and a contractor. No UX Director anymore, we report to Product Actual.

Product Actual calls into our meeting from their home office in a neighboring state. Which makes every meeting a virtual conference scramble. This week, Product Actual starts out with some news of the realm: Remote is leaving NerdHaven.

I've said before, Remote is not my favorite person in the company. They are professional, cordial, but I have zero rapport with them and any strategic discussions I've had with them have made it very clear that we are on very different pages.

Remote is openly skeptical of agile methodology. Which is fine, there are lots of shortcomings to being agile - but Remote's solutions to agile's shortcomings terrify me. Remote seems to want us to slouch back to waterfall in all but name. I could be wrong about that, and given their departure, it seems pointless one way or the other.

Remote was the person who called Runner into the room to sack them. Not that they had a choice, but a part of my brain won't let that factoid fade.

And now they are going. Rumor has it they are getting a good VP slot at some company in their state.

Anytime execs leave the building, the brain starts imagining reasons why this is so. Did they jump? or were they pushed? The answers to these are not idle gossip. If they jumped, the logical follow up is: Do they see something that should motivate me to jump? If they were pushed, were they pushed for a reason that is headed my way?

And there is no good way to get that follow up intel. Sprint is better plugged in than I am, and the rumor mills (post meeting) suggest that Remote and Olympus did not see eye to eye.

You don't cross Olympus. Period. Full stop.

Remote was Product Actual's boss, and are not being replaced. In effect, Product Actual is going to cover Remote's role as well. Which means my boss is a bigger deal on paper. In a more practical sense, it's likely Remote's position vanishes in a puff of smoke and our boss now reports directly to Olympus.

Sands are shifting, but it's not clear what is truly going on.

* * *

It's last week and I'm on LinkedIn, changing my password in response to yet another OMG breach notice in the press. Honestly, I use it so infrequently, I end up changing my password most times I visit - because I've forgotten what I used last time.

Anyway, once I'm in and making sure I can access LinkedIn via my phone, I get a screen with "You may also know..."

And at the top of the list is Lash.

Lash is one of those people who work in support - I almost never work with them directly, but I see them in the breakroom all the time. They are a laugh, and are good enough to at least smile at my jokes.

I'm surprised I hadn't connected with them on LinkedIn before, and then I notice that their listing at NerdHaven has an end date.

Wh...?

I look at their profile. They're gone. They got laid off on the same day as Runner.

Somehow this is the point where I get really sad. The boss was asking how I was doing, and I've been slogging along, trying to get sh!t done so I don't have to think about it.

Lash got laid off and I didn't even notice. That's just sickening. We were not friends, and barely associates - but they were good people. And they've been gone for weeks.

I remember sitting there at my desk like a zombie for like 10 minutes. My desk - in what we used to call the UX fun house. Now there are three empty desks and me.

* * *

I put in my request to move back into the team room with BigDog's crew. There was absolutely no point in sitting on my own anymore. Runner and I had left BigDog's room to get away from Noddy. Noddy was long gone (oh wait, I have an update on that. I'll come back to it), and Dash had bailed out as soon as they realized that they weren't in the same room as their devs.

Dash just does stuff - packed up their machine and just did it. Me? I asked for permission to move and filed the paperwork.

Dash is their own animal these days. They've been pulled into a massive project for a huge client that absolutely must land. They work on their own or with Devil - but the rest of UX (such as it is) almost never sees them. In the current environment, this can't help but cause tension. Which is unfair to Dash, they are a pro - but they are less inclined to push into collaboration with the team - they just want to get things done.

Which is admirable, but when a host of design decisions are being made by one person on their own - the rest of the design team wonders why those choices are in the fast lane to prod, while everyone else's have to run the gauntlet.

And I'm not griping about Dash - I'm griping about divided processes leading to a divided team. One of the chief attractions of my job was collaborative design. Working with smart people makes you better at what you do. Sitting alone at a desk getting swamped by problems is a slow road to ruin.

* * *

All of what you've read is over a month old. Dragonman left in May. Things have gone downhill from there.

Last month saw the departures of Pirate and Shake - two incredible developers that seemed more than foundational to the company.

I'm completely unable to express how great Pirate was - so I'm going to give up. Two key features that we've promised to deliver rest on bedrock code written by Pirate. I doubt anyone understood the problems Pirate solved - and to the poor dev who gets asked to follow up on their work....

...Good Effing Luck.

* * *

*needle scratching sound*

(Ugh, the dog is going insane. I'll write more in a bit, but suffice it to say, these past two weeks have not improved things.)

Butchers Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:42:00 +0000

The other oddity of any layoff: the one piece of information that everyone desperately wants - who was let go - is pointedly withheld from staff.

On the day of, or perhaps for a day after - this is defensible. Some people have not been contacted - and you don't want to have situations where a person's fate is known to others before they are told. Nobody wants zombies.

But once all of those affected have been told, it would save a lot of time to just get a list out there. If for no other reason, than it will help productivity, since the entire staff won't be hopping around gossiping about "have you heard?" and "Do you know if...?"

It also clears out the misinformation.

Source, as it turns out, was right about most things - but they were wrong about west coast dev. Thespian and Pirate are safe - and thank God. NerdHaven would plow into months worth of relearning if those two weren't around to make sense of our data.

But the west coast QA was all but destroyed. Three out of four of their QAs were cut. Bizzaro, Toad, and BK.

They still lost devs, HellBoy is gone. And ZeDev.

HellBoy I will miss. They had a fantastic logical mind - I gather they were a handful to deal with in person, and there were questions about their code quality. But I always clicked with them. They made sure the feature I asked for was at least as good as I wanted - and frequently made it better.

ZeDev just makes me sad, they were out of the office on PTO - taking care of their kid. Really nice person, quiet. The kind of person who just gets it done without being all in your face like HellBoy.

This side of the wire, BigDog's team lost a dev slot, but it was FNG's slot, who'd already left us for another job. They won't backfill the slot, so Corporate still gets their pound of flesh, but nobody has to get walked out of the building.

Dragon lost Gooner, who I was hugely fond of - they were an encyclopedia of soccer knowledge and very entertaining.

The SMEs lost Ihaq and Balin - that was known.

Hockey2 is gone. The person who said they had better opportunities outside of NerdHaven, but stayed because they liked who they worked with.

Hockey1 is safe - and again, thank God. Nobody knows the plumbing better than they do.

Services lost four folks I don't know terribly well, but this is on top of having two put in their notice a few weeks earlier. I'm guessing those won't backfill, so the load on that group just got a hell of a lot heavier.

And we lost both of our documentation folks. So, software documentation (traditionally terrible) will now stop getting written at all.

All of this will make delivering our work take longer.

And while it is pessimistic to assume that only terrible things can follow, its where NerdHaven is right now. I truly felt we were getting momentum going into this next month - people were excited.

Now morale is in the toilet and will stay there for a month or so.

We gotta claw our way forward and be professionals. And I'm sure we will.

But we're gonna bitch first.

A Too-familiar Ritual

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:55:00 +0000

"Why does this keep happening?"
-Sisyphus

Four minutes.

I timed it.

Inadequate.

And immediately after, I'm screwing my guts back together in a conference room - trying to look like a professional.

* * *

This morning started out normal, mostly. Crate the dog, corral the kids. Out.

Runner's setting up the gear for a charity run that NerdHaven is participating in. Passing out the swag. I'm opting for the green water bottle right about the time I get a notice on my phone.

Living Room movement.

I have DropCam. The dog is up to something. He's in his crate, so he's probably not up to much, but I check and-

he's not in his crate.

I check the history and see that Mr. Dog tried the side door (which we forgot to latch) and happily escaped into the kitchen. He's probably doing God-knows what kind of damage to the house, right before he leaves an epic steamer on the new couch.

I gotta bug Gumby about something first, but their door is shut. So I get some coffee and head into an in person meeting I have to. Afterwards I'll bop home and work remote until noon. I have a presentation to the SMEs this afternoon and I need to be in the office for the video conf.

I get a desk check with HellBoy over in our west coast office - HellBoy is killing it on a story I wrote for this big feature Sprint's running. HellBoy spots all kinds of issues and (this one time) I actually am ahead of them, since the UX group went over all the crazy edge cases yesterday.

Well, almost all of them, Sprint caught another one this morning, but... anyway. The story is going well. Should go to QA today.

I take my machine and head home to uncover the horrors the dog has inflicted on my home. I don't see him in the window... but-

-he's happily greeting me at the door. I check everywhere, but nothing is ruined. The dog has....been good. I don't know how to express my disbelief of this, but perhaps he was just stunned into inaction by the amount of choices he had.

Which should I destroy first? OOhhh! I can't decide...!

I set up my VPN and go back to virtual work. Right away, I get IM'ed by Source. They want me to call them.

I start explaining why I'm out of the office, and Source laughs.

"Y'know, it's probably a good day to be out of the office. Put your feet up a bit, there's news."

Source is pretty good about knowing things, it's kinda how they got this gig.

"There's gonna be a team meeting today."

As I have said before, sudden meetings with the boss are never good.

Still, this doesn't have to be bad.

"Remote is in town."

Sh!t.

Remote lives on another plane of corporate existence. Runner's been saying money is tight, lately - so if our corporate masters have deemed it necessary to fly Remote out here, something is about to go down.

"This will be an announcement of a force reduction."

Bad.

"UX will be affected."

Really bad.

"The West Coast dev team is being let go."

Are you F*#k-ing kidding me? We can't lose Pirate and Thespian, that's not possible...! Nobody can do what they do...!

Source backtracks a bit, but repeats that the west coast team is going to be hit hard.

And then they say it "You are safe." The words I've been afraid to ask for.

I am safe. But somebody on UX isn't.

Source has to go, they swear me to secrecy until the appointed hour. I'm supposed to cancel my presentation to the SMEs.

"They won't want to talk to you anyway, their team will be affected, too."

Cripes.

So, now I'm in the know - about something I shouldn't be. I don't know much, so there wouldn't be much point in sharing what I've heard. When it comes to issues like these - only dead certainties count. But you're never allowed to share them.

I don't want to go back to the office. I don't want to face people today.

I go walk the dog to clear my head.

I start thinking about our group. If we're losing someone, there are two main candidates: Red and Gumby.

Red's on a contract and keeps getting jerked around by NerdHaven. They were supposed to make Red an FTE months ago - and pointedly hadn't. Red was starting to get more than a little nervous, but their project work is never ending. If Red goes, a metric sh!t-ton of work will fall on someone. Red's been absolutely great. They've inherited all of Dash's old work and kept up with their original team's work besides.

It will suck if it's Red. They are good people.

Gumby... I admit that's a bit of a long shot. But Gumby was strong-armed out of the UX director job and into Product - where... I don't know. They don't seem to have distinguished themselves. They probably do a lot more than I realize, but my interactions with them have not gotten better since they shifted jobs. Gumby always wants to have more meetings, more discussions - and they never seem to push back against the factional foolishness going on at higher levels. Easy for me to say, I know - but a criticism of Gumby's project always seems to turn into hip shooting a solution to appease the critic. Instead of, "Hey, is this criticism something I should give a sh!t about? No? Then screw it." Or some other, more professional version of that. Just because someone else isn't happy isn't a reason for a complete do-over.

And Gumby does not seem to be making allies with the powerful set at NerdHaven. It's not really a lot to base a theory on, but it's just a feeling.

Source thought Sprint and Data were safe, too. I have to think Dash is, as well. Their project is a colossus and no way they get pulled off it.

I get back and log in. Cancel my SME meeting - and I see that the team meeting is scheduled to start in the next 30 minutes.

!!!

I put the dog back in his crate - making sure to latch both doors, this time - and bolt back to the office. No time for lunch, and no real appetite. I grab a snack at the ground floor cafe and jump into an elevator.

With the meeting starting in the next....geez!...five minutes! People who are getting their notice will probably know by now.

The 'vator opens and I see two co-workers from Service headed towards me. One of them is sobbing, the other is telling them to just breathe. "You're okay, you're okay."

* * *

They don't have a box in their hands, but it's full on obvious what is going on. I clear a path and head towards my desk. I see Drool in the hallway, they're looking grim, but they are still here. They have the look of forced stoicism.

Scan fob, duck through the door. I know the bad news a bit early, so I'm going to shut my mouth until the meeting. In four minutes.

I'm almost at my desk and see Runner. They smile.

"Hey, I'm packing up my sh!t"

No.

They're chucking pens and such into a box.

No.

All I can manage is "Whu-?"

No. No. No.

"I got laid off."

Not Runner.

Runner and I started on the same day. Literally went through all the same sh!t in the rampup. We were joined at the hip on Arwafn. Then Runner became the go-to on two huge internal projects and,

and now?

Runner says Remote was trying to get their attention all morning, so they knew. Walked into Remote's temporary office, saw the two other guys in suits and just said "Gimme my damn folder."

They will get a severance, it's not catastrophic, but I'm just gutted, and Runner's always talking about how they are the stable income in their family. Their spouse has good work, but it's sporadic as hell.

Gumby walks in, they hear the news and are staggered, they hadn't a whiff of this, didn't even know Remote was in town.

Red comes in, they appear to have survived the cut. Which means Runner is the only loss to UX. Runner knows that Ihaq is gone, and Balin is also gone.

Sh!t.

The team meeting with Remote starts in seconds and I ask if this is immediate, or if they will be around after the-

"I'm gone."

I hug Runner and try not to lose my sh!t in the hallway. BigDog comes in as I'm leaving and I have to just walk off.

Two years, I work with you - and now I just walk off.

After four minutes.

Inadequate.

Three Bucks

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:13:00 +0000

This story is about the collision of three random things.

Thing one: I'm on Twitter and see this picture.

It's a picture of Errolson Hugh, in a rain jacket he designed - retweeted by William Gibson (who, I firmly maintain, is the most consistently interesting guy on twitter).

Because Gibson retweeted it, I look at it. It's from a website that looks to be designed by people who hate their users. It has marketing copy that practically begs you to find the author and punch them in the head.

To wit: "Full spectrum. Full frontal. Uncut. Hard R. NC-17. Overbuilt. Ultralight. Asymmetric"

Ugh.

The brand is called Acronym.

And pretty much everything they have is black. They are fronting. Hard. And then you look at the pricetags and about blow a fuse. That raincoat in the picture? It costs 1,200 Euro, which is just around $1,300.

Which is nuts.

But William Gibson loves this guy and his jackets. And Gibson (channeling Cayce) is into high quality stuff that doesn't have visual flash. No visible brand names. Just good design and high quality.

Watching a few of the Acronym videos, it's pretty clear that Errolson is huge on style - but is all about design for use and durability. Yeah, he does kung fu in the videos, but mostly to show that his pants can do that without tearing.

And there is a sick amount of cool stuff going on with his gear. I love the little collar magnets to hold your earbuds.

Still, $1,300 is madness. This company makes tee shirts that cost almost $400. Entry level? F$*k that noise.

Still, ya put it on your "If I win the lottery list."

In ink.

* * *

Next up is Gumby.

Last fall, Gumby comes up to me and Runner and asks us if we want to get in on a football pool. After the reflexive eyeroll, I get back to work.

Runner's into it, and pretty soon Gumby and Runner and talking about all the fun of picking winners and losers for the week.

I think of it as homework, but eventually Gumby announces that they'll sign up for me and I can pay them back later.

Uhh....thanks...?

So, next thing I know I'm being emailed a spreadsheet from the pool organizer. It's one of those pools where you pick winners for each game, and weight them based on how confident you are. Each team gets a number from 1-16 and if you end up being right, you get whatever points you assigned to the matchup.

It's more than homework, it's homework on a subject I'm not interested in.

But, high score for each week gets $5... so.... meh.

Sportsball!!!

*Eyeroll*

I pay Gumby the $20 entry fee, so I'm not a deadbeat. And get back to work.

Literally the next time I think about the pool is Thursday afternoon when Runner bugs me to get my picks in, because they are due in three hours.

I'm leaving work in fifteen minutes, so I've got less than that to make my picks and then get the boy to practice.

I go to FiveThirtyEight.com, because Nate Knows Numbers. I literally grab his picks with print screen and paste them into paint. I move the chunks around until they are in first to worst order and then type in my point assignments 16, 15, 14...

Runner is asking me all kinds of questions about whether or not the Cards are good this year or if the Ravens are back on their game. I have no idea about any of this $hit. I pay literally zero attention to the sport these days and what little I have managed to observe has been forgotten so I can free up enough RAM to remember where I work.

I email FM my picks and bail - regretting that I ever got into this stupid thing.

Next Tuesday, the scores come in. Runner has won the week, and I'm down somewhere in the last 4. Not dead last, so leaning on Nate the stat guru has really helped me. But Runner's jazzed, and good on them. They actually thought about their picks. Did some research.

Three weeks in, I've resigned myself to coat tailing on Nate Silver's odds, because I know absolutely nothing about what is going on. Knowing that I have points at risk makes Sunday Googling a little more interesting: Hey, did my teams win? Well, sorta.

"Sorta" is good enough to get me into the middle of the pack. A few weeks after that, I actually get the high for the week.

Yea! Five bucks! Three more like this and I'll break even.

Hah.

But the organizer keeps emailing a list of who won the week, and who has the highest number of points across all the weeks so far. It's just bragging rights, but I'm up in the top three. I guess my week to week numbers aren't winners, but I'm more stable than most of the players, who bounce from worst to first and then back again.

I'm using the same stats every week, so... I guess I would be stable. It's not putting me top of a given week, but I won't be the anchor man overall.

That's cool.

And then I win two more weeks. Fifteen bucks, total!

After those two weeks, I'm ahead in the overall score. Runner is mad at me. They got the first week and pretty much nothing afterwords.

I'm getting coffee one morning in the breakroom and TierI starts razzing me, "You gonna let anyone else win the pool, murph?"

Ha, ha. Yeah, I'm on fire at the moment, but don't worry. It'll pass.

Two weeks later, I haven't won another week, but I'm still ahead on the overall.

Next time, its Ehl giving me grief in the breakroom. "Geez, let somebody else catch up, will ya?"

Ha ha, Well, if I win another week, I'll have gotten back my entry fee, so...

Ehl's incredulous. "Screw the weekly winning, the overall pool must be over four hundred bucks..."

!!!!!

I nod and head back to my desk.

WHAT???

Okay, I re-read the contest rules and find that the overall score is not being included for laughs, The person with the most total points at the end of week 18 gets 80% of the total pot.

I count the total number of players and we're around 36 people. That's like $700! which means....

*calculating sound*

Over $500 bucks!

Holy crap, I'm an idiot.

I literally had no idea about this, but (duh) of course there would be a pot. Imagine paying $20 per person and paying only $5 per week.

Great work, if you can get it, but...

Okay, so now I'm looking at the overall and trying to figure out how I got to this point. Looks like most of the other players are bouncing around wildly from week to week, but there are about three or four that really have been cruising along with me. These folks have a method, too.

My method is simply: ask Nate, but it's a method I've used consistently for almost ten weeks. Better still, Five Thirty Eight's stats improve over time because more is known about the various teams each week. No odds are bulletproof, but these odds are the result of quants pumping data through all kinds of scenarios to see what shakes out.

Folks who pick however the mood strikes them are not going to beat the likes of Nate.

Now, I'm getting grief from a number of people in the office who (unlike me) have known that this pool was for real dollars since the beginning. One of those is PD, who is chomping at the bit in the overall - barely 10 points behind me.

They ask me, "How are you doing this?" I've led in the over all for seven straight weeks.

I could say "I'm using odds from Nate Silver." But then, that would help them. So, I say (disingenuously, but accurately) "I have a spreadsheet, and I plug in the odds."

Which is true, I have the spreadsheet the pool organizer gave that lists the matchups for each week. Everyone has the same spreadsheet.

And yes, I do enter the odds into this spreadsheet - but the only odds I have are the odds I take from Nate Silver.

Five weeks from the end of the pool, some dude comes out of nowhere to overtake me in the overall.

I knew this would happen. Just about the time I'd start to think I could win the thing, my method craps out on me. And - thinking logically - there's lots of reasons I should have expected it to.

Nate Silver's method is to compare the team strengths and run through all the probably scenarios to see what percentage result in wins vs losses. But that ignores a key aspect of the late season: when a team has their bye in hand, or is assured of their playoff slot regardless of their remaining record, they may just choose to tank a game or two. Why should they risk injury to their stars in a meaningless game against an opponent that is never gonna make the postseason?

Screw that. And so Nate's clean numbers on how often this team's starters should beat this other team aren't really relevant - since the coach is benching his starters after the first quarter.

I have two crappy weeks in a row and some dude is pulling away. I'm starting to wonder what system they are using. They probably have a real spreadsheet with odds in it.

And then I go back and check all my scores, because the organizer keeps saying "errors can happen." And I find an error - and unfortunately, it's an error where I got 14 points I shouldn't have.

I check and double check, and find out that Runner's score was too low that week. Oof.
I contact the organizer and fess up. They dock me the points and I'm solidly in second place

But then some dude has a truly brutal week when I net 119 outta 136 points. I'm back on top, with two weeks to go. PD is faltering and some dude is the only one who can catch me. Second from the last week, I get pummelled on the Pats and the Hawks tanking, but so does everyone else. I'm still up.

Some dude gets the exact same score I did. Hmmm.

Last week of the pool, the Pats bone it again, but they are my only double digit fail, and I end the week with 90 points out of 136. I'm averaging 68.8% of the available points overall.

Some dude misses me by five points.

I've won the pool. The pool I didn't know existed.

A few weeks later, the organizer comes by to give me my winnings in cash.

Five hundred and twenty three dollars, thank you very much.

* * *

At which point, E steps in to ruin things. I'm jazzed about having a big wad of bills and E's like "What should we spend the money on?"

Now, I'll admit, that at this stage of the game - Es plans for the winnings had not entered into my thinking.

At all.

I'm pretty sure she was yanking my chain, too. But the point was made.

You think that money is yours, do you?

And I don't know where to go with that. The closer this money got to reality, the more my brain entertained thoughts of getting something for myself. After all, this money was "off budget."

The bills will still get paid, our savings deposits will not falter - and this money will arrive and become... something I wouldn't normally get.

* * *

Runner wasn't exactly helping. Soon as they saw the cash, they were like "Now you can get that jacket."

Ha ha ha. This is like, a third, of what that jacket costs. Ha ha.

Ha.

But that's about all the pollination that idea needed. I know there are five stages of grief, but I'm not sure how many stages of pining there are.

Let's count, shall we?

First: Denial. Ha ha ha.

Second: Advocacy masquerading as doubt. No, no. It's completely impossible. But WOW would it be amaze-balls, right? Look at the way they did that pocket...

Third: Feigned Logic. Well, it would probably be the last raincoat I would ever buy. And really, it's a good thing to increase the amount of things in life that make you happy. Think of the Nest - every time you use it it makes you happy. Or your Tom Binh bag - that makes you happy, right? This would be just one more thing like that. And hey, its not like you're going to get a $400 tee shirt, that's nuts. A jacket is a long lasting thing. You can wear it and still dress down.

Fourth: Actual Logic. Ermagawd, that is a lot of money. Don't you have car repairs to do? Wouldn't the responsible thing to do be to put the money in savings and watch it get devoured by some stupid household expense?

Fifth: Anger. WhytheFark should this money get gobbled up buying a duvet and some pants for the kids?

Sixth: Bargaining. Hon? I'm wondering what you'd think of buying one of these jackets. I don't want to buy anything that is going to cause resentment or that will blow a hole in our budget. I think we can do this without breaking our bank, but I wouldn't think of buying such a thing without talking to you.

* * *

That was about a week ago.

Two months ago, E's surfing the web and shows me a picture of a puppy called Tobias. We've been looking to complicate our lives with a dog for some time now, and have not been having much luck.

I want a dog that looks like a dog, which poses a problem, because apparently only I know what this means. Moreover, our local shelter is blessed with the problem of more demand than supply. This is great for the doggies, but hard on potential owners.

The day after our shelter got over 60 puppies in and put them up for adoption, I'd called them to ask if they still had puppies and was told "yes." So we dragged the kids down there after work to look at the doggies.

All were cute.

All were taken. A fact that is not apparent until after you find a suitable puppy and ask their staff. "Oh, that one is taken. Guess again!"

It is not a fun game. Particularly when all but 1 or 2 dogs are spoken for.

Finding out which dogs are available is something that can only be done away from the kennels. We've spent the bulk of our visit staring at the cute puppies in the kennels, oblivious this fact. All the while, people who reviewed the dog inventory online have been snapping them up at the adoption desk.

The kids resigned themselves to a dogless existence.

E and I got back to being ground down by work.

So, weeks later, E spots this dog, Tobias.

Tobias looks like a dog.

E's done this game too many times, so showing me the dog was more of a forlorn hope than anything else.

"I'm like, if we want this dog, we need to go now."

E takes this to mean, there is no hope. As E has to take little e to an appointment soon, this is it for her. Not this dog, then.

But this is not where I'm going with this. E takes off and I drag the boy out of the basement, because the shelter opens in about 30 minutes. I understand that people are usually there early.

The boy is cranky and I manage to stand on him hard enough to get him in the car and out. Google tells us we will be there about 15 minutes before they open. Good enough?

When we pull up, there are at least a dozen vehicles in the parking lot. Most with people in them. The boy and I wait in the car before we see a father and daughter walk up to the doors of the shelter and go in.

??!!

The Boy and I go in and discover that - in addition to the ten or so people in the parking lot - there are about a dozen people in the entryway of the shelter. The staff tells us all to wait until they make the announcement that the shelter is officially open.

It is nice of the staff to let us in early, but literally everything about getting to see a dog is opaque and difficult. Which dogs in the kennels are available? Who knows? How do I go about seeing a dog? You'll figure it out!

When the appointed hour arrives, the staffs gives us the go-ahead and the Boy and I all but bolt over to the adoption desk. It's more than a bit unseemly. I'm thinking of the people in the parking lot, who waited for someone to turn on the "Open" sign. They will be too late. Or the people who are headed into the kennels, they are hosed. I'm trying to move fast without being tacky. I get body blocked by some senior citizen, utterly clueless to the fact I need to get by. I dodge around them, so much for not being tacky - and then we scramble up to the desk like we're in an event.

Even then, we are fourth in line.

The first person in line asks to see a cat.

Huzzah!

The second person is asking for a dog, but not Tobias.

Third person also wants a dog, but inexplicably wants one of those dogs that look like cats.

We're up and blurt out "Tobias, I want to see Tobias."

And he's available. They give me his folder (the coveted, tangible symbol of "I got dibs on this animal") so I snap a picture of it and text it to E.

We get to meet him and he's a dog, not one of those freak cat/dog hybrids. More importantly, he's a very calm animal. Dog, dragged out of a kennel, after being picked up as a stray - plopped into a room with two new people including a child.

Dog's like: whatevs. Got anything to eat?

This is impressive. Too many dogs in this situation are freaking out, or jumping/chomping, or hiding or any number of things that are the opposite of calm.

This dog is calm. I tell them that barring a sudden, violent attack, we will go forward with adopting this animal when my wife arrives. We're in an observing room and more than a few families (fresh from the kennels) are emerging to ask if they can see Tobias next. The staffer helping us says there are a few more people on Tobias' list who want to see him.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

And I feel bad for these folks. They are learning the hard lesson I acted on when I came in. Ignore the kennels. Know which dogs you want to see when you show up, and ask for them immediately. We are going to get this dog - and I feel like a thief.

E and little e show up to formally say "Yes" to Tobias. We are going to rename him - the shelter name doesn't suit him at all.

Thankfully, once you agree to get a dog, the process is very smooth and easy. Some light paperwork, they recommend getting a microchip, and we buy some dog gear: a crate, a leash, collar and two chew toys.

It takes about 20 minutes to get him chipped. Meantime, they ring up the charges.

Five hundred and twenty dollars.

* * *

I resist that math. What did you get with your football winnings? I bought a dog.

Not a jacket, or a cool, once in a blue moon extravagance. But a dog. Something the household was planning to buy anyway.

I swear, it's almost as if the Dog is trying to make his case. He's mostly housebroken, takes to his crate well, loves people, and aside from the occasional, unauthorized gnawing - is a pretty solid dog.

He gets us up early.
Makes us clean up our floors.
Gets me to walk almost every day.
Makes me familiar with my neighborhood.
I've actually met some people (they're nice).

He helps get the kids up in the morning.
He's gotten us to go on family walks - and to dog training classes.

But I'm still resisting the urge to erase the line item in our ledger marked "football pool" and accept that this is where that money went.

I just...

Oh, fine, dog...

You win.

Last stage of pining: Acceptance.

But I'm keeping the last three bucks. Gonna start me a jacket fund.

Showcase

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 02:44:00 +0000

Every two weeks, the Agile process demands that a dev team appoint a representative to demonstrate the work that has been completed since the start of the iteration.

At NerdHaven, the representative is typically a member of UX. Policy within UX is that if the completed work is your story, you showcase it. Which makes sense. The UXer wrote the story, they can describe what should happen, why the work was done, and if things get brutally technical, they can have a Dev or QA jump in to spell out the details.

I generally enjoy showcase - mostly because I enjoy explaining things, and (so long as I know the material) I'll talk to anyone. There's some AV hassle setting up a showcase (since a significant number of attendees are remote) but the procedure is known, and most of UX has it down pat.

We used to schedule a mini-meeting in the showcase room, for the 15 minutes immediately prior to showcase - just to get the webex setup and the conference call going. Eventually we got to the point where we could fly though setup given a minute or two.

Conference calls are horrid (everyone knows this) and we compound that by having part of our showcase be a video call with the west coast office alongside the webex/conference call. It's great to see the west coast folks when we talk, but it is an added complication.

Again, though - we've got the drill down pat.

Fire up the webex in the non-chrome, non-IE browser (because chrome is wonky with our POS webex software, and because IE is our demo browser - if we crash it, the webex would die, too).
Use the webex software to call the room (this saves us from having to punch in a long passcode on the room's cantankerous touchpad saucer.
Mute our computer's speakers to avoid reverb
Call the west coast on the video phone
Launch IE and log into our demo environments
Start recording the webex, pause it
Wait until the royalty arrives
Start recording
Present our stuff

There's always something going south somewhere, but this - plus a few debug steps - gets it done for showcase.

And we've tried to improve on our showcase. A lot of our audience is not getting our message. We've tested this. Dash took an informal survey of what we showcased and what people remembered and, well - folks were not getting a lot of what we said. Some are just touring the showcase, but some of those folks will need to support the features we demo-ed. If they don't get our message, we are doing things wrong.

Then there are the SMEs. Our SMEs are smart folks, but as I've said before - they live in a different universe than we do. UX is neck deep with Devs and QAs, and now we are Product, so we are up to date on what work is planned, and where it is at.

The SMEs are in the field, demoing features and helping clients set up our product. They have advanced degrees and are specialized experts in things folks like me cannot possibly understand. This is why we have them. When we are designing a feature for our clients (who often have the same advanced degrees) we need to lean on the SMEs to make sure we are not screwing things up with our non-SME ignorance.

The SMEs get this. UX gets this.

Sadly, this understanding is a one way street.

UX are designers, SMEs are not. And when I say designers, I don't mean detached "creatives" (a word I loathe beyond measure) - but designers in the Mike Monteiro "Design is a [Goddamn] Job" sense. UXers are paid to understand problems and design solutions for our end users. We are tasked with designing comprehensive, consistent designs that delight our customers. And we must do this in the Agile methodology (meaning no comprehensive redesigns, but improve what you touch - when you touch it). And do user research, and write requirements (as well as more and more business analysis).

The SMEs at NerdHaven have little patience for UX. We are in their way. I have mentioned this before - and I will keep mentioning it, I guess. Because right after I feel we are mending fences with the SMEs, we will have a meeting where they basically tell us that UX is entirely staffed with morons.

To give them their due, they have spent more time at NerdHaven than I have - and have had to deal with the likes of Noddy, the Professor, Ahh and Heater. Noddy has poisoned the well to an incredible degree - and my recent struggles with Arwafn has not improved things.

When Arwafn went over the cliff, Runner and I were suitably mortified - but the SMEs were out in the field with clients, trying to explain to them why the report was showing incorrect data. One of our SMEs - an incredibly sharp person I'll call Whitelake - has routinely pronounced Arwafn to be of limited value and perhaps something we should abandon.

The SMEs give the impression that if UX would just get out of the way, they could tell our Devs what to build and everything would be grand. They share the belief that our Devs just make things complicated and that an approach that "keeps it simple" would shorten timelines and result in more deliverables in a shorter amount of time.

The SMEs are smart people - but in this regard, they are completely wrong.

When Arwafn blew up, I remember the then-lead SME moving to ensure that future development would have greater SME oversight - sign-off, even. The thinking being that, had we greater SME involvement in Arwafn, the feature would have launched without problems.

But Arwafn's problems were deep, under-the-hood, data problems. SMEs are experts in their domain, but they are not data experts. They do not design databases, and they assuredly do not design user interface.

But they want to. And while I am not so much a UX snob to believe that the SMEs cannot help design good interface, they fall victim to the same fallacy that launched countless crappy user experiences. Designing screens is easy!

No. First, its not about designing screens - it's about discovering the actual problem the user wants to solve and designing a solution. A solution could be a screen - or it could be a phone number to call - or an incredibly complicated database-driven web application that synthesizes heaps of unseen data to present the one calculation the user cares about - when they care about it.

"I could tell you what the user needs in about 5 minutes. Here, I'll draw you a sketch..."

Being UX, you should always hear these kinds of comments out - but when they break down into "we get the right data and give it to our users, easy!" UXers like myself want to jump out a window.

Yes, I know we should show them the right data. Now, can you tell me how we distinguish from good data and bad data - so I can tell the Devs how to write their query?

And then... the handwaving begins - or references to data elements by their NerdHaven-given name, rather than the names of client-supplied data elements. Elements that should conform to a standard, but often don't.

Oh, we should use the date when event X happens? Do you realize that there are three different data elements that could have that information? Do you realize there is no way for us to look at those dates in those elements and know which of them is correct - if any? Do you realize that each client could use any of these elements - or one of their own devising? Do you understand that even if they send us the right data in the data element we expect, low level interface code could adulterate it or prevent our application from using it? Do you realize the amount of effort would be involved in getting a detailed picture of what our clients are sending and what is actually making it into our application - for even a single site?

I have been working to pin down an elusive bit of data, PofC and the forensic analysis has stretched into months. We've built new upstream processes, moved mountains and we're still barely there. Our solution for Arwafn's PofC problem will still only work for most of our clients. Not all.

Some of our SMEs are incredulous at this. "PofC is basic data, send to us in a DAT message. Don't you know how to read a DAT message? This is really very basic."

Yes, we know how to read a DAT. What we cannot read is the DAT message our clients don't send to us. Some clients only send us DAT messages half of the time. Does your 'basic' solution account for this? Are you aware that years of legacy code exists that parses DAT messages differently for different clients? Do you understand that they will send us DAT messages in parallel for the same record, forcing us to either guess which thread is the correct one, or merge the threads into a single thread? Each of these approaches has weaknesses, depending on the originating system (or systems). Do you have a recommendation for how we would approach this for all our clients, each of whom may have a different configuration?

We have explained this to the SMEs ad nauseum. Sometimes, it clearly has no effect. Other times, I see a nod of comprehension and resignation. But always, always, we seem to end up in the same place. The SMEs think we are fools for not grasping the simplicity of their solution. We are incompetent - bunglers.

I have personally explained to Ihaq the difficulties in solving the PofC problem. They seemed to get it - then later in showcase, they have asked why a (long abandoned approach to PofC) has not solved the issue so that this new work (that I am showcasing as completed dev work) is unnecessary. On the one hand, I should be happy that an explanation of our work from last year has been retained by a SME - yet I am frustrated that they had completely forgotten the in-person demo I'd given them less than two weeks ago.

And I know they are frustrated, too. Always, always - the feature work is incomplete. We'll address their concerns in a future story. They've heard this ad nauseum, too. They are sick of waiting. Every story we present is "the early version" or "for beta" so we can "refine it later." They know what they want - and we are just not getting it.

A particular sore spot with me was the printed output of Arwafn. UXDirector (way back when I first started) had flat out told me that we were not simply going to repeat what we'd done in the past. Namely, make the report output into a .CSV file. UXDirector's point was hammered home "we don't want to tell our clients that - in order to solve your data problem - the first thing to do, is to leave our application and open another program."

You could look at this a lot of different ways - but I took it as: the boss wants us to try new things. So, we talked with clients and found out what they wanted to do with Arwafn's output. They wanted modest editing, but nothing that required Excel - so we provided the ability to edit the view in Arwafn - and a PDF output that mirrored the view.

What we soon discovered, was that the client data was extensive enough to require a multiple page PDF output - which was universally unpopular. We intended to revise the approach so we would support all our client's data in two page-sized chunks - but before we did, all of our data issues blew up and we spent the next year fighting them. The SMEs were angry with the PDF, they wanted an Excel file output and could not believe we hadn't built one yet.

Now, we're rounding the bend on our data issues and the SMEs are back banging on the issue of the export to Excel. Being beaten up for a design choice I was driven into, then berated for not having fixed it by now is particularly galling. The SMEs think the PDF was some crazy "designers" idea. That it is in its final form - rather than the orphaned feature that it is.

I will ask to fix the PDF, but I am virtually certain that I will be told to make an Excel export instead. When this happens, the SMEs will nod their head and confirm each other's wisdom - and the work of the PDF export will be truly wasted. I beyond furious about this. There is no way to explain this to them - but I will keep trying.

This is UX.

* * *

Where was I?

Oh yeah, so I'm reviewing the few stories I have to do for the showcase that starts in an hour, when Red walks by.

"Did you realize that showcase is in BigLake?"

Uh....

BigLake is the largest meeting room we have and it has the worst video conferencing gear. I have had a series of catastrophic AV failures there, to the point where I have abandoned the room and made my remote attendees call into a new room. I hate BigLake. I had promised myself that I would set up a trial webex/vidcall with the west coast just so I can learn how the hell to make everything work when I don't have the entire company watching me. But there has not been time. Now, it will be trial by AV fire in BigLake.

But Red's not done. "They've changed all the AV gear in BigLake, too."

Uh...... sh!t?

I go immediately to Servicedesk and ask for the how-to for the new gear. Servicedesk is very precise, but it still learning the ropes themselves. They make a few things very clear:

Don't touch anything on Remote #3 (there are, naturally, three remotes)
There is a secret button on Remote #1 that makes the number buttons do what you'd expect them to
There is special software to share your screen with the west coast office folks, but don't use it if you are doing webex, because it causes crippling lag
We will not be able to video conference with the west coast, since the main line can only support the audio bridge call

These are not good things to learn 30 minutes before showcase, but I take note of them and thank Servicedesk, who then disappears into a puff of smoke.

BigLake's AV setup is VASTLY different. Where we used to have a desktop machine with a USB keyboard and some mic pads around the room - we now have a wireless ergo keyboard that connects to a completely invisible box whose only video display is the overhead projector that is either off, or currently receiving input from another source (guess which! such fun!) There's a wireless mouse (that lags incredibly) and no video cable to connect to if I want to use my machine. I will have to the room's machine. There's a TV for video calls. I power up the projector and - a minute or two later - I can see the faint projection of a Windows 7 screen. That I can deal with, so long as the phone hookup is working.

I test dial into the audio bridge and get it working - and watch the Window 7 screen projection on the wall get replaced by a bright blue field of nothing. There is a TV, which shows me the status of the outgoing call and soon I see the west coast office. But the room's computer display is still gone. I can't see what I'm doing on the box, and can't demo, or do anything.

F*&k.

Nugget walks in and I grab them, since they just worked this room with Red. Nugget immediately begins pressing the button on Remote #3 that Servicedesk said not to touch. The blue screen on the wall becomes a black screen with an input error message. Five minutes to showtime, folks are starting to come in and sit down.

F*&k-ity F*&k, F*&k...

Nugget then hangs up the phone. TV goes black and the projector, too. I grab Remote #3 and press the one button Servicedesk said we should mess with other than power - HDMI1. Which reconnects the overhead projector to the room's invisible PC.

I can see what I'm doing on the PC again. I start firing up Firefox to get the webex running and immediately realize that this machine has none of our bookmarks. All of our demo sites have incredibly convoluted URLs that I cannot remember (which is why I bookmarked them). The webex URL is pretty straightforward, so I fire it up-

-and am told that the invisible PC's version of Firefox needs a plugin to run the webex.

-which requires admin rights on the box.

-which I don't have.

Two minutes to showtime.

Chrome usually works for webex, but sometimes not - I go for IE (accepting the risk that we will crash IE in our demo and take out our webex).

Won't this be fun? Let's go.

IE fires up and (merciful God) does not need a plugin to use the webex. It's spooling up when the west coast calls us on the videophone-

-which turns the projected PC view back into a blue field of nothing. Sprint's on the videophone.

One minute...

I ask Sprint to bail out on the video call and dial the audio bridge until we sort our sh!t out over here. Sprint does so without a fuss - they know the drill, and they know we wouldn't ask if it didn't matter.

We get our projected PC back, the TV goes black and Sprint hails us over the bridge.

Sprint? They just get it done. Sprint is great.

I have the webex working and have fired up another tab to go to our demo site... and I can't remember the damn URL. I was hoping the prior showcase would have put it into our history, but-

I'll IM it from my machine!

But I can't because the invisible PC is a room PC and doesn't have IM, because: Bullsh!t. Some security jerkoff decided that a room can't be a user, so if you want to IM a room machine, you have to sign into the IM as yourself, then log out when you are done. As those are (naturally) separate credentials that you use exactly never (Button reads: "Remember-my-password-so-I-can-forget-it?" YES) I can't log into the IM.

Showtime!

Dash shows up. I like Dash, but they are habitually late in arriving to these things. They know their sh!t, and get it done, but as they are up first - with most of the demos - their late arrival is not helping. Sprint does the into over the bridge and asks if Dash is ready to go.

Dash says they are and the room projector flips to show the image of Dash's PC on their demo site. Dash is using the spiffy new software that came with the new AV gear and it's slick.

But wasn't there something that I'm supposed to remember about...?

Dash is partially into their first story when I realize the problem. Dash's PC is connected to the projector in BigLake (so we see it on our wall) and the projector in the big room in the west coast (which is not the room that Sprint and their team is in) but it is NOT connected to the webex at all.

So only the people in BigLake can see Dash's PC. I cut Dash off and ask if the remote callers can see the screen.

"No"

etc

I had the meeting over to Sprint, so they can go first now, while I get Dash up to speed on what they need to do: stop using the fancy room software and log into the epically sh!tty webex software we always use.

While they do that, Sprint is polishing of some solid demos because all Sprint knows how to do is get it the hell done. I'm realizing that I still don't have the demo URLs onto the invisible PC and I briefly think of doing what Dash is doing: use my machine to log into the webex, but - as if in answer - my laptop chose that moment to spontaneously switch itself completely off.

It had been doing that for a few weeks, usually within 30 minutes of undocking and Servicedesk was in the process of staging me a new machine, but y'know... as of now I'm just screwed.

I reboot my machine, and wait for the nastygram about not shutting it down properly.

Listen, bud - YOU shut you down improperly, don't go blaming me for your fail...

Sprint's wrapping up their stuff when it finally boots up. I use the invisible PCs awkward ergo-keyboard and laggy wireless mouse to set Dash up as a presenter (because Dash's webex account has never been promoted to Host or presenter).

Dash gets rolling. I call up my list of URLs and attempt to print them and -

I wish to GOD I was making this up- the nearest TWO printers are out of paper. So the room is treated to watching me walk in and out of the room not once, but twice.

I can't get the printout, and I don't dare risk using my "guess-when-I'll-switch-off" laptop. So, I'm stuck using the invisible PC with no bookmarks.

Great.

Dash finishes up and it's my turn. I have three things to demo, and each requires a separate demo site. Plus, if I'm going to reference the story cards, where I have all my notes, I need to log into our workflow webapp.

-Whose URL I have not failed to memorize.

I take a flyer at it hoping that the prior showcase used it, but no. The entire company is now watching a member of UX who apparently doesn't know where anything is - guessing at URLs they use every damned day (with bookmarks and history-autocomplete, neither of which this PC has).

With help from Nugget, I get into our workflow webapp and start showing the cards of the stories I will demo. I go into the first demo site and discover that I'd made a typo in my notes and find myself unable to log into the first demo site. When I try to refresh the page, I discover that the function keys are dual use and the standard function of F5 has been toggled off and the key now does some other (completely unhelpful thing). There is a toggle to regain normal function key behavior, but on this ergo-keyboard they (ha HA, creativity!) have placed it somewhere I cannot find.

Awesome!

To force the reload, I have to (laggy) mouse into the address bar and hit 'Enter' and plow forward like I just don't care. I muddle through the 1st story, but the ergo-keyboard makes me type like a drunk, and the wireless mouse (between sensitivity and lag) is like throwing darts at the app.

Click. Miss!

At some point, over the audio bridge, I hear music. It's the theme from Jeopardy.

Someone is playing the theme from Jeopardy. While I'm struggling to get through the demo, someone has decided that I am taking too long.

So they decided to play the theme from Jeopardy.

You know, for fun.

And I know exactly who it is. The same SME who mocked Ahhh when they were struggling in their showcase ages ago. It wasn't funny then, and I'm even less amused now.

I call them out. "I'm assuming that's you, Balin."

Balin fesses up. "Guilty as charged."

Most of our offices are watching, so I just say "Appreciate your input."

I finish my two other stories and wrap up. I'm absolutely livid and say so. I'm in Gumby's office venting about how utterly sh!tful it is to be mocked by a SME, to be made a fool of, when literally everything about the AV was falling down on my head. Gumby hears me out, although God knows why they put up with me.

It is - so far as I know, the first time I yell at work.

UX's relations with the SMEs has always been problematic, but really? This is where we have sunk to? Were the situation reversed and Balin was up there sweating out a demo, would anyone on UX razz them about it? Never.

I go off for far too long in Gumby's office and then seethe my way home. Gumby has tried to respond to any and all critiques of showcase and apparently the Dragon showcase was far worse than the one I was in. Gumby is looking to change things up and make improvements to the process, because that's the Gumby's answer to everything: more process.

Never mind what needs to happen is that we sort out our goddamn AV gear before this kind of crap happens again.

* * *

The next day, Balin emails me to apologize. They say they only meant to add a bit of levity to the meeting and were sorry to have upset me. Somebody has clearly asked them to contact me.

But it doesn't matter. I'm so glad to have an opening to explain where I was coming from. I cataloged the utter insanity of that day (in brief) so they would know why I wasn't laughing. I want them to understand - we are on the same team. I was having a bad day, a very bad day. I swore I'd be up for humor on any other day, but that day was not right time for me.

Balin was great about the whole thing. It was a great clearing of the air. The SMEs and UX will still be at loggerheads about a lot of things - but I want them to know we are people, we work hard, and we want NerdHaven to succeed. And that we believe the same about them.

We have to get past the animosity.

In a very weird way, the Jeopardy theme - and Balin's subsequent email - may represent a thawing of the ice.

Malheur or "Beware the Slighted White Man"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 30 Jan 2016 01:21:00 +0000

How do you get to this point?

Less than a second after this image was taken, the man in the hat will be fatally shot.

He is 54 years old, married and father of 11 children. And he will be shot down as he stands in the snow, reaching for a 9mm handgun as four law enforcement officers are aiming weapons at him.

What is this man thinking?

I've heard more than a few people react to this as "Good!" or "he got what he deserved," but really - this is a genuine tragedy.

Eleven people call this man 'dad,' yet he chose to illegally occupy federal buildings with a gun. Chose to declare to the national media that "these buildings will never, ever return to the federal government."

When pulled over by authorities, this man - with other people in the car - chose to flee. Risking his own life and the lives of his passenger & those of the officers who had to give chase.

With officers in hot pursuit and a roadblock ahead of his vehicle, this man chose not to slow down, but attempted to drive around it - burying the front of his truck in the snow & missing an officer by a few feet. Again, this man and his passenger could have been injured or killed in the crash. Had the officer in question taken a few more steps before the crash, they might have been seriously injured or killed.

The police could have (justifiably) fired into the truck as it narrowly missed one of their officers. This man or his passenger could have died as a result.

And finally, this man chose to exit their truck & raise their arms, the first sane thing they do in this entire sad affair. They are confronted by five officers in front and one behind. After noticing the officer behind them, the man lowers his hands and puts one into his coat four seconds later.

So the police kill him.

I have a lot of sympathy for this man's family. To watch a family member do what this man did must baffle them. Even steeped in a family mindset, surely they are wondering why didn't he keep his hands up?

And the capstone to this entire thing is that this man died for a cause that was lost before he was even born.

There is no chance that all federal lands in the west are going to become private lands, or even state lands in this century.

This man threw his life away for complete bullsh!t. Bullsh!t he apparently believed above everything else - above even love for his children. That is just sad beyond measure.

Think of how deluded a person would have to be to think that seizing a federal bird sanctuary would cause the federal government to give up federal lands. This is something that can only be done by Congress - a body that has never even brought such a bill to the floor in decades. The same body that can barely muster the energy to raise the debt ceiling - this is the group that is suddenly going to spring into action to appease a small group of malcontents camped out in the middle of frozen nowhere.

Had this man bothered to check the political winds even a little bit - he would have learned that the rest of the nation has no idea that the feds own so much land. The rest of the nation could give a sh!t about federal land ownership and less than a half of a sh!t about people who do.

What's that you say, grandpaw? You're mad at the gubment? Well, get in line.

And I get that western residents have locked horns with the feds over land for ages. Some of their grievances I might have patience to listen to. But the reality is that the federal lands belong to everyone.

And everyone outnumbers the hell out of the few folks out west who want to graze for free. That's democracy - majority rule, with rights for all. And there is no right in the Constitution that says you can use or take federal land just because you're unhappy. Unless you can win over enough people to sway Congress - you're pretty much outta luck.

And guys like this unfortunate father of eleven, were fed up with being out of luck. They will not be ignored....!

But they are, nobody cares about them - or even thinks about them.

Oh, but they will.... Frustrated and unknown, these folks are gonna get heard. So they grab a gun, all the stuff they own that looks mil-spec and dress up like soldiers of the government they claim to hate.

Because it makes them feel powerful. And they get attention. And their ranks begin to swell.

The gun makes people have to pay attention. Not because they care about the message, but because they are afraid you are going to hurt someone. This laughable nonsense that the guns are there for "defense" is even dumber than the idea that Congress is going to do what they ask.

The militia have guns for defense - in case the cops attack them.

Psst! You in the cowboy hat! I'll let you in on a secret. GUNS ATTRACT COPS.

It's a fact. You go to a public place as an armed group and cops will come to you. Guns are cop catnip, and everybody knows it except these militia idiots. Take the "defense" argument another few steps down the road and you're at the next secret these idiots don't appear to realize: GUNS HAVE NEVER MADE THE COPS GO AWAY.
If you have the weapons, they come to you - but if you SHOOT any of the weapons near the police, you will have attracted the attention of ALL OF THE POLICE. For how long? UNTIL THEY GET YOU.

So, your "defense" argument is stupid from any angle, cowboy-man.

Guns work wonders at getting media attention, though - and if you were smart - you'd find a way to attract the media without the cops.

Militias, being idiots, get both.

Still, when cameras are finally aimed at them - they come to a terrible realization:
They are in no way prepared to make a national statement.

If the Bundys had a brain in their head, they would have vetted a group of committed westerners and presented themselves to the nation in a non-threatening, but extremely public way.

The key to protesting is to make the public identify with you - so they sympathize with you.

Bundy and Co announced their collective Other-hood in 60pt bold. Chest thumping stupidity became their brand. Their ranks were stocked with a mix of those who were committed to the cause and those who needed to be committed to a padded room. Tarps, Fluffy Bunny, sumo guy for God's sake.

With every week, the militia added another star to the "We are Freaks" flag flying over Malheur.

The feds did something smart - perhaps not on purpose - by waiting long enough for these malcontents to become a national joke before they made their move.

I have wondered if the totality of their failure became evident to them before the shooting of this sad man. Such a realization might drive a slighted white man to do something rash.

But I still cannot help but wonder what it was in the mind of LaVoy Finicum that kept him going - even in the face of overwhelming evidence that his personal cause was lost. Did he really think he could shoot his way out? Did he think his death would change anything?

(LaVoy's ghost - if you're reading this, the answer to that last one is NO.)

And what, in the name of anything held holy would compel a man to desert his children like that?

Don't you even say "Patriotism." That is utter bullsh!t, too. If you love your country, live to make it better, don't die to make yourself feel important.

Father of eleven, dead in a snowbank. A month from now, the nation will have forgotten his name and his cause.

Decades from now his family will still be missing him.

Sad.

Olympus Has Spoken

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:39:00 +0000

Once a quarter, NerdHaven has its big to-do with the higher ups. The All Staff. In the normal run of things I accept the invite and put it out of my mind until one day I come into the office and all the managers are dressed up.

At Nerdhaven, casual is the way of things. Atlas, who use to be the boss of UXDir, typically stalks the halls in a faded tee shirt and jeans. Until recently, Atlas has been showing up in a button up shirt - so there have been more than a few jokes about them bucking for a promotion.

But really, when you see all the managers dressed up, it's an All Staff day.

This All Staff was different. This would be the first one since Olympus assumed the role of GM. The first one since NerdHaven had the first layoff. Six FTEs were just let go and this would be the meeting that laid it all out. The how and the why.

Not the who, though. I've never understood this, but the one piece of information that folks want most is the one that does not get brought up directly. Who got canned? I can't imagine there is a lower thing to do that to just put up a list of those who were let go, but honestly - folks want to know who will no longer be around. It's not like we won't find out eventually. Might as well pull the scab off now. But that's not how it's done. When CorpWorld fired 86 people on Black Wednesday, all they did was send out an updated org chart - which made technology scrape the text of the new one and the old one and run Beyond Compare to see who got axed.

UX knew Heater was canned, but nothing else. Prior to the meeting, Olympus sent around a powerpoint deck with a revised org chart, but it wasn't a lot of help. First off, it looked to be the product of several different authors, each with a different way of looking at the organization. Some groups included their contractors, some didn't. Some represented hierarchies among people who reported to the same person, some didn't. Our group's chart made it look like I was at the same level as Gumby or Devil - and that was definitely not the case. Gumby used to be my boss for Chrissake, and yes, we both reported to Product Actual, but they clearly ranked me.

Org charts are documents fraught with all kinds of unintended meaning. I'm fairly certain that whoever put the chart for UX/Product was just making sure all the people were connected to Product Actual. Runner seized on some subtext that I'm convinced was just oversight. "Why is Dash at the top of our group?"

Which is a good question. Dash was new. If we were going by rank and seniority, our group list should have looked something like:

Product Actual

Gumby
Devil
Pogue
Sprint
Runner
murph
Dash
Red
(Open)

Instead, it looked like

Product Actual

Gumby - Dash

(Open) - Sprint

Devil - murph

Runner - Pogue

Red

Which sends entirely the wrong message to people like Devil and Pogue (and Runner, apparently). So, by this chart, Dash is up on the food chain and Runner is down.

Powerpointers of the World, hear me: Thou shalt not phone it in on org charts - all kinds of wrong stuff happens.

I digress.

So the All Staff is going down today and there's no avoiding it. What we'd originally thought was clipping Heater for poor performance was actually part of an organizational earthquake. Today we would get all the why we could handle.

* * *

The morning was a blur - I owed Sprint two stories RFD that were hot on the heels of the four stories I gave Dragon yesterday. We review the work with the devs and they clear it, barely. I went way too fast on one of them and missed a few items that I was cleaning up until a few hours ago. I get the lunch notice and happened to be en route to the breakroom when I get it on my phone.

Ahhh lunch. One of the good things about an All Staff. They figure you are essentially missing lunch for a two hour meeting, so the office springs for food. Typically, it's just subs, chips and cookies, but it's free. This time, no cookies. I run into Pepe and they laugh, "Cookies are for people who make their numbers!!"

That's sure to be a part of today's meeting. NerdHaven is not shy about spelling out the economic picture to everyone. Everyone cares because everyone's bonus depends on us making our commitments. The buzz up until now is not good. I'm thinking we might not get a bonus this year.

All Staffs are on the ground floor, in a common space used by other businesses. I file in late and end up sneaking into the back row seconds before the show kicks off. I'm next to Runner and Dash, just behind Gumby. UX still hanging together, even though we are Product people now.

Olympus is at the podium and launches into an apology for having to talk at length, but it has to be done. Olympus is a polished speaker, does this kind of thing all the time. And they fire up Powerpoint.

God, I hate powerpoint. Tufte is right, Powerpoint is for presenters, not for audiences. But Olympus is restrained and sensibly avoids most of the common mistakes of tiny fonts and overly dense slides.

They get right to the point. We have made organizational changes that will, as most of you know, affect six of your colleagues. Not too passive, and everyone knows what they are talking about. This does not represent a downsizing, this is truly restructuring. As a matter of fact we will be adding eleven positions to our company. Between additional staff and other investments, we will be adding [x] million dollars of investment in the company this year.

This is a relief. Nobody wanted to think NerdHaven was in trouble financially. We didn't make our numbers, but our numbers were for growth targets. Yes, we'd all be happier if we hit those, but growing slower than plan is a hell of a lot better than shrinking. And we are not shrinking.

Whew.

Olympus reviewed the good and the bad of the past year. I note that Arwafn is slotted under the bad. There is no other place it could be, but seeing (again) that my signature project is an open wound this far along in its existence makes me squirm. We have months of work with PofC to fix Filter B. And that's just to get us back to a baseline of what folks wanted. I have at least four other features to add to Arwafn to get it to a point where I would feel good about washing my hands and moving on to the next thing. That's assuming I get that work prioritized and...

I look up and Olympus is on to the org charts.

GMs get to do a lot and Olympus has moved swiftly to reorganize the VP level of NerdHaven. Their protege, Juice, is a new VP (has been for awhile now) and others in their favor have neatly moved up. Data's prediction came true: Remote is now the VP of Product at NerdHaven. They were part of our temporary "sister company" but now that we are no longer conjoined at the hip, Remote is still with us - officially.

Atlas looks to have been demoted. My memory of org charts is always suspect, but Portal and TheDude used to report to Atlas, and now they are peers. That just makes me sick. Atlas is the most hardworking, generous person I've known in tech - and they were gunning for higher office in NerdHaven. They've been denied promotion twice now, and this was them actually moving down the ladder. I worry about them. We've had some tech challenges lately, and if all of them are landing on Atlas...

...well, that would just be sh!tty.

Olympus wraps up with a view downrange of where we are headed strategically and at the end, I'm convinced that the Heater thing is not the ominous thing I thought it was. I believe NerdHaven was looking to get rid of Heater for performance reasons and a re-org came along and allowed them to do it faster. That's crappy, but really - Heater was not getting it done.

Listening to Olympus lay out their vision for the company, it is clear: they have a plan, and they have been busting their butt to get things moving so the market doesn't get ahead of us. NerdHaven is well positioned, but there are always threats. We got complacent for the past few years, this will not be allowed to happen again.

Next up is Juice. A lot of resentment has cruised through NerdHaven about the meteoric rise of Juice, but the fact is - they are smart, driven, and they get stuff done. Juice lays out their team's accomplishments and responsibilities - which seals the deal for me. Juice's team has a brutal schedule of ramping up clients and keeping them supported. If they can do that and live, they get my vote.

Then comes Remote. Today's meeting is Remote's coming out party for officially joining NerdHaven's org chart. They will run Product, and so they are now the boss of my new boss in perpetuity. Remote's love of Powerpoint does not translate into effective delivery of visual information. The fonts are small, the graphics - impenetrable. Remote is a good speaker and gets most of their points across. For some reason, they believe that Noddy's last project was a success. Oh, and UX will be working closer with the SMEs.

I don't know why this makes me unhappy, but it does. The SMEs are a smart bunch, with highly technical degrees and experience in the field. Working with them should be a no-brainer. But we've always managed to step on each other's toes. The SMEs have the expertise to inform our designs, but they are not designers. But design is fun - and everyone imagines that what they want is what everyone wants. One of our SMEs, MontBlanc, is particularly headstrong. They have been proven right enough to be dangerous, but the mindset of "just do what I want" is a dangerous thing. Sooner or later you will pay. I believe regular contact with the SMEs is the cure for our social differences, but procedurally - adding more cooks to the kitchen will not increase our velocity.

And we are not getting it done as a business unit.

Finance steps up next to deliver the news that everyone is sweating at this time of year. Bonuses depend on our unit and our corporate unit hitting our numbers. Finance tells us that our corporate unit has failed. At best, our bonus this year will be half of what it could be. Odds are, it won't be the best scenario. Finance goes through the rest of the numbers which show us not hitting our growth target, but still growing. Its not good news, but not truly bad.

Last up is Olympus again. NerdHaven typically gives an award for great performance since the last meeting - an award where anyone can be nominated by a peer, and management selects a winner. This time, with Olympus head down cranking out the new business plan and the re-org - there hasn't been time. Olympus apologizes and tells us all they've selected some people for recognition for exceptional performance. They stress the usual disclaimers - picking these folks isn't meant to sleight anyone - but they wanted to point out some folks who have really done well in their opinion.

Olympus taps their deck and a gold star appears on the screen with a name in it.

And it is Data. First name picked! Which is awesome. Data has been doing battle with an insanely difficult government protocol for an insanely difficult client and has come out of it with a genuine win. The protocol will become easier for our client (and everyone else - this protocol has never been done before, precisely because no one did what Data did: TALK to the govt about it). I'm cheering for them. They have struggled in obscurity to convince folks that data stewardship is key to our product. With Olympus calling them out - it is clear that a rubicon has been crossed. The GM knows that Data is a key player now. This is good for all of us.

But really, Yea! Yea for Data!

Olympus taps the deck. Another star. A name I don't know. NerdHaven has a lot of departments I never see - but Olympus makes a point of describing the person's unit and what they've done for the company.

And again, and again. I briefly hope that I'll be up there, but it's clear that the names are in alpha order and they are way past where my name would be. I'm hoping Olympus will tag somebody in UX or on BigDog's team. But there looks to be room for only six stars on the slide and the sixth one is someone in contracts who does the unenviable job of making sure our phonebook sized contracts are signed and sealed so we can begin taking the client's money. Olympus does a nice job of spelling out what this person has done for the organization, staying up until 3am to book business to make deadlines. Literally giving every spare minute to getting new clients on the books.

Rockin.

Six stars called out by Olympus in front of the whole company. Yeah, it's not a bonus check, but knowing that the GM personally appreciates what you're doing has gotta be one hell of a shot in the arm.

Olympus taps their deck. Another star comes up.

Its me.

"Where is murph? I thought I saw them?" Olympus asks. Hands point to me and Olympus begins telling everyone about how they appreciate my efforts on Arwafn.

I'm literally dumbstruck. I haven't been in a meeting with Olympus since Arwafn blew up - well over six months ago... Runner's giving me the "whaddaya know about that?" look and I manage to mouth 'thank you' to the GM.

They go to Q&A, then we file out and Portal gives me an attaboy. Portal. The cynic with a soft heart. They're happy for me.

And its about then that I realize what a freight train Arwafn has been. It is nowhere close to done - but it has been an all consuming thing. NerdHaven has promised to make it right, and even if they hadn't I sure have. This thing will work. I will make sure of it.

I'm just glad it hasn't been in total obscurity. Because this sh!t ain't easy.

Managers, take note: taking the time to notice the efforts of folks outside your immediate circle is good for any number of reasons - but it does wonders for morale.

Yeah, I didn't get a formal award trophy - or the usual gift card.

But I got a Gold Star from Olympus.

That's pretty solid.

That Old Familiar Feeling

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 21:46:00 +0000

Booting up for Monday, and what a Monday it is.

Sick as a dog, voice sounds like Barry White after a week long scream, and I've got four things on deadline for Dragonman.

I like Dragonman. Aside from their tendency to be unabashedly fit, they are thoroughly intelligent and great to work with. Dragonman has put me on notice that my action items must get done today.

I'm 99% of the way there. But the Dragon team is very particular about how their work is captured and they are backend with a capital B. I'm front end since forever - so you know, different worlds. Dragonman pairs me up with a tech resource who will help me try to speak their language of foreign keys and normalized values. It's slow going - but then, I'm UI and don't need to know all the backend stuff. I just hate feeling stupid.

And the Dragon team will pounce on you hard if they feel you're not up to par. Their experience with UX to date has been pretty choppy.

While I'm thinking about that, I get an invite to a meeting from Product Actual. Today.

Alarm bells start ringing in my head, but I stifle them. This is NerdHaven. We are different.

I check the invite. Sent 10:43am - the meeting is for 12:00. The subject is Quick Team Update. Okay, that's three out of the four signs of truly bad news. I open the invite list for number four. It looks like the entire list of Product and UX (now part of Product), except...

Heater is not on the list.

Of course. Product Actual just took the reins, and Heater has been on the bubble for a while now. Gumby had them on some kind of probation and it looks as if Product Actual is closing their account. All of this is theory, of course.

So I go over towards the Dragon room and see if Heater is in. They aren't. I ping Pepe, a Dragon QA: Hey, is Heater in today?

Pepe looks confused. "No, come to think of it."

I text Runner - who is way ahead of my speculation. They are certain that Heater is gone. I consider asking how they know, but figure I'm already too far along down the old way of thinking.

* * *

I feel bad for Heater. I think they were just getting over their head, Dragon is a really tough assignment, but I think Heater was struggling with some memory problems. Dragonman lost his patience with Heater in a discussion with me - which to know Dragonman is one hell of a rare event. Heater 's got all kinds of family issues at home as well, and this will not make things easier at all.

The meeting didn't have a room set up - it was booked as a phone conference only. I meet with Dash and Red in one of our breakout rooms. Red was wondering what the meeting was about and I unthinkingly blurt out "Heater's gone." Red seems stunned by this - they are new enough to not know that Heater had performance issues.

"By choice?" they ask.

No.

We end up doing a mad scramble to find the room that everyone else has grabbed, Product Actual is in the office today, so it makes no sense for anyone to be remote except Sprint and Data. We pile into a small conference room and Product Actual makes it official.

"This organization has not met its commitments for last year, so there must be consequences."

What the...? This was not on my script at all. This sounded bad.

"As a result, there will be Force Reductions - which is a fancy way of saying layoffs. Heater is no longer a member of this team. They have been contacted and they will not be returning to the office."

So it is about Heater...but...

Product Actual presses on, "This should not be viewed as any reflection of Heater or the work they were doing. The organization cannot continue funding at the prior levels and unfortunately this group needed to lose a position."

Wait, I thought Heater's work was poor - that they were going to be axed because of it...

I've tried to be as direct as I can at NerdHaven. I ask "So, this was a budgetary decision and not performance based."

"Correct. Other departments will be asked to lose positions as well. The full scope of these decisions will not be made available to the larger group until tomorrow's all staff meeting."

Sh!t, sh!t, sh!t. Now I'm sweating who else is on the chopping block. There are so many great people here at NerdHaven. People I'd want to hang out with on weekends kinda people.

Dash asks a pertinent question about our team's having lost Noddy, Ahhh, our Director and now Heater: Is there something we should know about the future of UX here...? Gumby launches into some corporate babble about how UX "isn't going away" and my mind is flashing back to a conference room back in CorpWorld.

Me, Din, Ruby, Stimpy all sitting around a table after Black Wednesday. Smiler is looking me in the eye in a very unnerving way... "CorpWorld is not getting rid of your group."

Eight months after that meeting, we were all gone.

UX isn't going away...

Product Actual takes over from Gumby and clarifies that we will be working closer with the SMEs and Juice's group. That we will be more collaborative.

I like collaboration, but it does not speed things up when it takes the form of final sign off meetings and late requests for design changes. This will not make us faster.

Mostly, I'm thinking what on earth is going on. Our corporate masters have reached down and established that they can hurt us. This we knew.

Now we know they will hurt us. And that they want us to change how we do things and go faster.

As a result, we will add process - and we will go slower.

And then they will punish us again.

On the way out of the room, the hairs on the back of neck go up - and stay there.

The Universe of Now

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 03:45:00 +0000

I'm just wrung out.

I'd intended to walk through the full (and truly epic) windout of the Ahhh saga - but I never seem to find the energy.

Summing up is only marginally less unjust than skipping over it, so here is the abbreviated version. On a week when Gumby was out on PTO, Ahhh announced to the team that they'd taken another job and would be moving from the west coast to the shadow of the Smokey Mountains.

As most of the team shared a negative view of Ahhh, there was the usual mutterings of 'best wishes' and what have you, but the relief in the room was palpable. Ahhh was constantly inserting themselves into the process of tracking work, but was doing painfully little actual work. And they had been - inexplicably - put in charge of a critical piece of functionality. They'd written up a story for the team whose centerpiece amounted to "Do these 3 impossible things, yadda yadda yadda" and then went out of the office.

When the devs encountered this, they came to me in lieu of Ahhh. I read Ahhh's story and was completely mystified. "Magic" was our former UXDir's favorite shaming weapon when critiquing one of our stories. Ahhh's story was full of Magic. Not that a UX needed to write down every aspect of how a story would work, but they had to have had the conversations to validate that what they wanted was feasible. Ahhh had done none of this, so the devs were clueless of what was needed or where to even get it.

As soon as this was clear to me, I told the devs to skip those portions of the story and finish what was known and defined. We could work on the impossible items once Ahhh was back to better define what they were. Stop the bleeding, regroup.

I knew this would make some waves, but there was absolutely no other alternative. Ahhh was out - I didn't know how they felt the impossible things could be accomplished, and Ahhh had neither told the devs verbally, nor wrote it down.

Naturally, I had underestimated Ahhh. I called them to advise them of the situation and spent (I am not kidding) an hour on the phone telling them what it's taken me a paragraph and a half to tell you. Ahhh wasn't getting it. They seemed to think there was enough detail at first, then when I asked them for what the devs were asking for, they suggested that what I was asking for wasn't their responsibility.

For an hour.

They then went to Gumby and Ihaq and told them the feature could not proceed because I had insisted on a different approach. I ended up clarifying this numerous times to the boss and to others that "hey, all I said was - 'we don't have enough info to know how to do this in the story. We'll do this when we have the right info.'"

I then called Ahhh directly and said basically 'let me have it,' and got treated to an incredulous Ahhh asking why I was messing with their story.

Ugh... I'm failing at this summing up thing. I think I ended up burying the hatchet with Ahhh at the end, but Ahhh's goodwill was still suspect. On their last week at NerdHaven, Gumby asked me if there were loose ends I was worried about with Ahhh's departure and I said we needed to make sure we got all of Ahhh's user research.

Up until the last week of their time with us, Ahhh had shared exactly one file with the UX team, a file that Gumby had made them co-author with Runner. Runner had taken a first crack at it and Ahhh had independently started some epic research piece. When Gumby told Ahhh that Runner's PowerPoint would be the final format for the report, Ahhh petulantly disposed of their own report and sent Runner two photos to include in the deck.

This was all we'd seen from them. Week after week, we were told that Ahhh was doing 'user research' and I'd spent weeks asking to be invited to observe their sessions or see their recordings. All I'd gotten was pushback or silence. With the end in sight, Ahhh finally posted three powerpoint files on our wiki detailing their user research efforts. The files were light, but not badly done. One of them drew heavily on the T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E user test sessions I'd forced my way into earlier. Reading the file it was hard to put faith in the conclusions. More importantly, each of these files touched on feature work that Ahhh's fellow UXers were working on - none of us had seen them until now. Likely we wouldn't have seen them had Gumby not made Ahhh give them up.

Ahhh was leaving with just a week's notice and was probably eager to get gone. I asked for them to transfer their recordings to me, since they were on the cloud and would be hard to recover once Ahhh's account was deactivated. I sent Ahhh detailed instructions how, but they called to insist I walk them through it. Frustrating, but we got the files.

Ahhh's next move just floored me, though.

We have a lot of sensitive information at NerdHaven. No state secrets or anything, but information that has legal ramifications if it makes it into the wild. We have posters all over the halls telling people to be careful about locking their screens, displaying this information only when absolutely necessary for a business purpose, and basically keeping it wayTheHellSecure.

Ahhh mentioned that they had some artifacts to transfer to our network drive and that some of their files contained sensitive information. We'd created a secure directory on our share drive for this kind of stuff, but it was new and Ahhh hadn't been given rights to it. Since they were leaving the company tomorrow, they weren't about to get rights, either. Ahhh had asked us what they should do with the files so they could be put in the secure directory.

I can't remember my exact suggestion, but it was something like 'Hey, ping me when you're ready and you can drop it in the directory next to the secure folder and I'll move it in as soon as you do.'
Ahhh's response was to email the entire department with the sensitive files as an attachment.

Can one of you put these files into the secure directory for me?

It actually took me re-reading their email to believe they'd done something so stupid. They'd actually asked us to put these sensitive files somewhere secure by sending them to us via unsecured email.

I went and asked everyone in the department to delete (and purge) the offending email and its attachment. I then told Ahhh what they'd done, and told them to do the same.

Reality Check time....

Then I went to our experts in secured information and asked them what to do. They gave me the company policy which read like I needed to go to DEFCON-1. It required an incident report be filed within 24 hours.

Double Reality Check time...

So I went to our in house manager of secure info to ask "Really? Do I really have to do this because of Ahhh's screw up?"

What do you think a manager in charge of security says? They say "Follow the policy. Now."

So I put it in Ahhh's lap. Hey, Ahhh - I know it's your last day, but you need to fill out this incident report on your data breach. Best wishes and Good Luck!

Honestly, I'd had it. Ahhh did something any of us could have done, but really, they were the ones who brought up the fact that the info was secure to begin with, so their just emailing it was incomprehensible. Odds were, no data was compromised - but policy was policy and I was not going to let their stupid become any more of my problem than it already was.

At the very end of the day - Ahhh sends me an incident report that read like a Nixon presser:

Mistakes were made.

I pass it on to corporate, since if Ahhh won't be available for comment in 10 minutes, and *poof* Ahhh vanishes in a puff of fail.

(Three phone calls with corporate later, they agree that the incident was not a breach, but they are glad we reported it to them, since they had questions about why we were storing files of this nature and perhaps would we be willing to discuss what other kinds of files we were keeping...?)

* * *

That was one small piece of the maelstrom going on in my head now. There were the holidays, loaded with goodness, sloth and gluttony. A week of sleeping in for damn change. Holiday VISA bills, a snowless Christmas and right about the time I'm feeling normal I'm flung into NerdHaven's new year.

There's no way to really sum up the other NerdHaven history, either. Arwafn's broken features had been in Beta for months, and one of our two problems appears to have been solved, but the other was maddeningly stubborn. It involves figuring out the specific location of a person at a given point of time. Our clients were either not sending us this data at all, or were sending it to us at the wrong time, so Arwafn was showing bad data.

The seemingly simple response would be to yell at our clients and say "send us the right data" but this was not an option. There were other ways to get at this data, and we had been commanded by management to develop them. Clients would not be asked to change what they send us. They could not, or would not - and we had no leverage, anyway. We would find this datapoint for them, by leveraging the data clients were sending us. I'll call this elusive mcguffin PofC.

And it's awful.

(It is also one of those 3 impossible things that Ahhh included in their fail-a-thon story so many months ago. That I've been working with people in three time zones for months to get an idea of how we could get part of PofC drives home how inadequate Ahhh's analysis of this element was. "Make Magic." Ugh.)

As it happens, the feature that Ahhh needed PofC for still has not been built, because all of Ahhh's stories were utter crap and imploded as soon as devs looked into them. Dash is now plowing through the feature like a demon and leaving awesome UI in their wake.

Gumby met with our support team about PofC and came up with theory about how we could do it. They passed it to Data and Thespian over on the west coast to do some data analysis on it and lo and behold, it showed some promise. Thespian is one of our database gurus and getting their time is like getting 1 on 1 time with a minor deity. Thespian is humble as hell, and a marvelous person to boot - but getting time on their calendar is intimidating... "Do I really need to bug them...? What if they think what I'm asking them is stupid?"

etc.

But Thespian gives us some good data, and HockeyOne suggests additional analysis that we can do to get a better picture of where we are at. More people get involved. It becomes what Data has always been asking for "a team of people from across the organization." Gumby calls us all together and asks us to present to our SMEs, but we aren't really sure what we have yet. So I pull a smaller group together to beat our data into conclusions we can put before our SMEs for real-zies.

It goes well, and we start hammering out the ever expanding list of details we are going to need to get what amounts to a very small portion of the PofC datapoint.

It will be enough to get the features we need done and Arwafn will finally be made whole.
Olympus demands it.

Oh, yeah - there was the high altitude drama. Which takes some explaining of its own.
Right before the holidays, we had all kinds of executive turmoil. Our CEO was driven out for unknown reasons (but under a cloud, something to do with not getting Project X ready for market in time), their replacement made the rounds in a bizarrely Orwellian meet-and-greet "What is your favorite thing to do, person who could fire us all in an instant?"

UX was pulled out of the tech wing of NerdHaven and attached to Product. (Which gave me the shivers, since CorpWorld's favorite activity was passing around the unwanted UXers until they cared enough to eliminate them). NerdHaven was being meshed together with a "sister company" in the central time zone, and with Devil's boss leaving, our new Product VP, Remote, became Gumby's new boss.

Remote is nice, but very corporate. Dev background, funny. REALLY hooked on PowerPoint. But I'll give them credit, I didn't hear a lot of bunk when it came to the state of the company. They wanted transparency and honestly both ways. I'm afraid of Remote, but I believe they are not up to anything nefarious. They want things to get better.

Then our GM quit. I liked them a lot, they were plain spoken and fiercely direct - but you believed every word they said. They believed in attracting good people, building a culture of hard work and quality and keeping it that way. I heard via Remote that the GM had serious health problems and were broken up about no longer being able to do the job they loved. Depressing.

Shortly after that, we got more corporate convulsions. Having spent the past six months integrating us with a "sister company" under the big tent of our corporate masters, we would now begin the process of un-integration. Portal explained it to me as "it was a bad call, and now they are realizing that and reversing themselves. It is a net good."

I believe Portal, but it meant that UX would potentially be reporting to yet a different Product exec. As it happened, we got a new Product Actual, who would report to Remote - and everything about Product Actual is encouraging. They have a plan - they are articulate at explaining that plan - and they are letting the air out of a lot of institutional stupid.

NerdHaven is the best UX gig I've ever had, but there is more than an air of WTF with some of the decisions about what we should build next. Above a certain level, everything is politics - and the political class at NerdHaven is unable to grasp that they are not market experts. Historically, we've used SMEs, but they are SMEs of our user workflow (sort of) but they are not market researchers. Product Actual wants competitive research and actual data to decide what we do next.

It's.... refreshing.

Back when Noddy was building his new form of failure, everyone knew it was a doomed feature, because the end of the workflow we were trying to support would not be available for over a year. We could not support that workflow, yet we built the feature anyway, because our SMEs said we had to. Lots of money was spent - a lot was learned that we could use elsewhere, mind you - but Noddy's form was a sack of useless crap.

Product Actual was saying no more of this foolishness - and God bless them for it. I wondered how they would do when the (amazingly headstrong) leader of the SMEs tried to grab the reigns.

The answer was swift in coming - With our ailing GM gone, one of our VPs was elevated to GM - Olympus.

As in, Not Atlas. Olympus.

Olympus is the person responsible for our company olympics and a host of other bonding activities, but they are absolutely not a person to trifle with. Olympus will cut you off at the knees and throw your former limbs overboard. Gumby is absolutely terrified of them.

The same message announcing the ascent of Olympus to GM also includes a postscript that the head of the SMEs is leaving the company. The remaining SMEs will be attached to Product. This is a significant reduction in their standing.

I enjoyed listening to the head of the SME's presentations, they were passionate about their work (they worked on Project X), but I've come to learn more than a few troubling things about their professional ethics. Combined with their grasping political methods and big idea nonsense, I'm convinced their departure is a good thing.

So Olympus is holding the reins now. UX works for Product Actual, who seems awesome and sensible. Gumby is a peer of Product Actual, something they had to clarify, since I'd mistakenly thought Gumby was reporting to Product Actual.

Awkward.

But the truth is, Gumby has been losing political ground of late, and you can tell they are working hard to make that up with effort. I barely see them now outside of department meetings, and truth be told, I've really started to hate those meetings.

Used to be, the UX staff would get together and share what we were working on and set up collaborations that needed to happen. "Hey, you're working on a widget like that? I just made one, we should talk." A lot of camaraderie happened there as well. Good culture, as the former GM would say.

Gumby squashed that. UX meetings are now an agenda sent by Sprint to the team and Gumby reading through it, belaboring each point like they are trying to fill time. Gumby is good people, but they always use several sentences when one would do. It hurts their credibility and I don't know that there is a good way to help them with that. To mention it would be insubordinate, but I wish there was a way to help them. UXDir used to have a hand signal that meant "adequate answer, now stop talking." I wish there were a way to cue the boss when they were making half the room's eyes roll.

A Gumby staff meeting is something to be endured. Administrative procedures, corporate happy talk and.... questions? Moving on.

I haven't spoken to Sprint outside of a meeting in probably two months. It's nuts.

So much has changed. Used to be Runner and I were happily working away on BigDog's team.

I'm off BigDog's team - BigDog is now a manager, so even they are splitting time with their team and other teams.

Runner is hip deep in work with the Dragon team. Dragon is a backend dev team that fears UI work. Runner is big UI, so it's been a struggle. Runner had a huge project and appears to have landed it to the satisfaction of Juice (who is high in Olympus's favor, and now a VP). Runner threaded a series of needles and has every right to be proud.

Red is the newest member of the UX group and they are enthusiastic and very capable. They are on the contract bubble and we're all hoping they get converted to FTE. I wonder what they think of the latest batch of crazy - back when we interviewed them, things were so very different. They seem to fling themselves into the work and do well. They are getting some of Dash's work in the near.

Dash landed a big wedge of new UI that ran up against a brutal timeline spawning a series of bugs in production that made everyone unhappy. I believe this was the result of asking too much by a set date (beginning the death spiral of development) and BigDog's team doing their level best to get everything over the finish line in time. They made it, but will all kinds of asterisks.

Olympus doesn't like asterisks, and there will be lots of recriminations on this one. Dash should be proud, though - their feature is good. Far better than the rest of our other similar features, and it can be a springboard to more success in future.

Heater... I don't know what to think anymore. Noddy was the worst I've ever worked with. After they left, Ahhh was my go-to frustration. With Ahhh gone, the title falls to Heater.

I want to like Heater. They are sympathetic. They are nice, they joke around. I get the impression they want to do good work. They just....don't. Heater is assigned to Dragon, and Dragon is chock full of competent devs and QAs who know their stuff. I used to think Heater would write up stories, get them approved and present them at showcase - same as the rest of UX. With Runner moving to Dragon, I got to hear what was really happening.

Heater starts writing a story... and Dragonman or one of the other Devs or QAs will finish it. At showcase, one of the Devs or QAs will present it. Heater doesn't call clients, doesn't do research, doesn't do....squat.

And I like them, they are likable. But Runner would come to me almost daily, to tell me of yet another incredible thing that Heater did or didn't do. Heater has an amazing ability to forget things - to the point where I honestly fear they have a mild form of dementia. Things that have been ironed out by their team and written down in front of Heater will later be amended by Heater as if nothing had happened. Runner would repeatedly find a finished story of theirs had been rendered unrecognizable by Heater.

Heater is just behind the pace. That they've been on a team as clockwork as Dragon is probably the sole reason that Heater has been able to cope this long. It's also likely the reason Dragon habitually treats UXers with such contempt. Likable as they may be, Heater is hampering the speed of their team. And the rest of UX is busting their butts while getting blamed for all manner of problems to boot.

Gumby has been feeling the pressure. They have ceded huge political turf in efforts to please Olympus and Juice. Gumby doesn't seem to realize that their favor is fleeting. And you can only give away turf once.

But PofC is turning a corner, BigDog's team is putting an end to the bugs in the last release - things are starting to mend. I can feel it. Right before the holidays, Data let me know they were flying in from the west coast - which is great.

Data and I had a rough start - I was way too slow in appreciating the wider world they live in - but we've finally arrived at a place where we can trust that the other is going to do their level best to help the project. I'm excited to meet them in person.

They are exactly as I expected - a real hoot. We plunge right into PofC work and then Data disappears into an all day meeting that would have me tearing my eyes out. Data's stock is up lately, other people are finally appreciating Data's wider world as well. The future of NerdHaven will rely on things that Data has been telling us about for quite awhile now. It sounds like we will actually start to build the things we need for the future of the company.

Today was UX staff meeting - Data will actually be attending in person. Data has been attached to UX for awhile now, but they report to Portal (they asked to be moved right before Gumby started), so it's a rare thing to have Data in the room with the rest of UX. Sprint is calling in from the west coast, they are sick as a dog and I'm surprised they don't just skip it.

Product Actual is also in town, which is a bit odd. They live five hours to the west, and are usually only in for three days out of the month. These days - they've been here three days out of every week. We start up and I'm briefly embarrassed for Data to have to sit in on how awful our meetings are in person. Data does our meetings over the video phone, but somehow listening to Gumby rattle through the agenda in person seems like more than Data should have to bear.

But today, Gumby is direct and abrupt. They are taking a new position in NerdHaven, they will be doing work in Product - doing work like Devil - and they will report to Product Actual. Their portfolio will include Arwafn and Project X.

There's more - UX will no longer report to Gumby, we will all report directly to Product Actual. Product Actual laughs and tells us that they are the worst administrator around (my mind immediately flew back to UXDir's lax ways) and I laugh back "bring it!"

But mostly, we are all shocked. There was no hint of this. I ask if there is still a UX Director, and the answer is no. Gumby is leaving us, and now we are all direct reports to Product Actual.

Oh, and a big wedge of future UX work is going to be done by an external design firm.
And the head of Sales just resigned. And...

This is not CorpWorld - this is NerdHaven - but there is still that sinking feeling.

First the boss leaves, then you get re-assigned, then they start killing off the department.

Last one out...

No. It won't be like that. I have to think that this will be different. Product Actual is smart, practical. They like us. We are respected - most of us anyway. It won't be like that.

It can't be like that.

Action Needed

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 04:55:00 +0000

It's the end of July. We've just finished up showcase, where one of my stories got demo-ed - the first for BigDog's team in quite a while.

I'm sitting next to Devil, who is proxy for Product Actual. Devil is awesome. Today, everything went more or less to plan, so what happens next is mostly formality - but the forms must be obeyed.

Was everything accepted?

Agile requires that our team demonstrate what we've done to Product, and they get final sign off on whether or not it is done to their satisfaction. Devil nods, and I look in the queue and click the 'accept' button three times:

One.
Two.
Three.

And immediately forget about it. There's an iteration planning meeting coming up. I need to be ready. I think some of my stuff might get picked up.

I'm focused on that as I walk out, unaware of how three clicks will turn into a sh!t show.

* * *

From: Ahhh

To: murph

Cc: Nugget

Subject: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

Hello! There’s work I need to do on the tickets and having them in the showcase queue, checking them, and then moving them is my process. I don’t think there’s any immediate hurry outside of the showcase day. If you’re being asked to move them please let me know so I can address it with whoever is asking you. Thanks

Brief aside, here: Ahhh refers to stories as 'tickets' and refuses to call them anything else. Whatever. Ahhh has cc'ed Nugget, who is our Scrum Master, for reasons that are clear to pretty much no one.

From: murph

To: Ahhh

Cc: Nugget

Subject: RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

What additional process is involved in accepting stories?

My understanding was that you were minding the RFD queue with regards to priority. If this has changed, that’s news to me. I moved the cards to accepted because I was sitting next to Product when they said they were accepted.

From: Ahhh

To: murph

Cc: Nugget

Subject: RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

If there’s any of the field entries out of whack/missing/etc. I get a talking to. So, no. Not just priority.

At this point, Nugget comes over to my desk to ask me if there is some irrevocable aspect to marking a story 'accepted.' There isn't, I say, and since Ahhh is an admin on the site, they are able to edit any aspect of a card. Nugget seems confused by why Ahhh is making a deal out of this. I share their confusion. Nugget walks off.

From: Nugget

To: Ahhh, murph

Subject: RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

I like the process of updating right away in the showcases as the Dragon team does it that way too. I also try to update the release page shortly after (don’t always get to it) and look for Accepted before marking them off.

Are there some fields that are not updateable after the status is changed to Accepted?

From: Ahhh

To: Nugget, murph

Subject: RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

I sure can change my process to accommodate your process. Who will be the responsible party for moving the tickets to Accepted? Thanks

From: Nugget

To: Ahhh; murph

Subject: RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

Ok, thanks. I think you should own all the activities with the board which includes marking as Accepted.

Translation: Nugget is washing their hands of this.

From: Ahhh

To: Nugget, murph

Subject: action needed RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

Thanks! murph, Do you agree?

(Subject change and highlighted text in original)

From: murph

To: Ahhh, Nugget

Subject: action needed RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

I Do Not 8-)

Partly because I think the point of a tool like Mixer is to share a workflow, so that tasks have more coverage and people can help each other out.

But also because I really don’t see limiting use in Mixer as solving this issue. If you’re getting grief because there are missing fields, we can add validation to the transitions to enforce those fields (and share the issue with the larger team, so that new cards are filled out correctly, rather than have the same process lead to more cards to clean up).

From: Nugget

To: murph, Ahhh

cc: Gumby

Subject: action needed RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

Copying [your boss] as well for their thoughts. I agree the team should all move their cards through the workflow. Am suggesting that Ahhh owns the “bookends” to that flow meaning she will get it moved through the analysis phase and get it RFD and then be the one to close it out by Accepting it. If the Accepting can be done during the showcase, then this should work (at least for me).

If we still disagree, let’s set up some time to discuss further.

From: Ahhh

To: Nugget, murph

cc: Gumby

Subject: action needed RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

Nugget, Could you describe what moving it through the analysis phase looks like for you? We have various UXers assigned to the analysis work on the different cards – and typically the assigned UXer is the one to present it for estimation (in pre-ipm) and for RFD. It would be helpful to understand you thoughts in more detail. Thanks

From: Gumby

To: Ahhh, Nugget, murph

cc: Gumby

Subject: action needed RE: thanks, but please don't move the tickets to accepted

First and foremost, my expectation is that the team works together. Attached are the expectations based on what is needed for the team…regardless of who is doing the work. Ahhh is the single point of contact and we look to them for the work to be completed (like before a Pre-IPM). However, if murph is moving stories to accepted during the showcase, I would see this as a nice gesture.

I’m not sure who is providing the “talking to” as referred to below. The bottom line is BigDog’s team is relying on us to manage the queue. If managing the queue is creating such issues that it creates strings of emails on a regular basis, then we need to rethink the process.

When I read discussions like this, I feel like a lot of energy is being focused on the Mixer board that would be more productive if focused elsewhere.

And when I read discussions like this, I feel like hurling my laptop out of window.

Progressive Disclosure

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 02:18:00 +0000

Alright, you're gonna think I'm looking for something new to slag on - but this really happened.

And
I

get

to
b!tch

about
it.

* * *

Rewind to a several months back. Noddy's webform is only three months late, and it's barely a form. Scratch that - it's barely the idea of a form. Noddy's written up a story for the devs that says basically, "put some text boxes and dropdowns on a web form. Oh, and give them labels, too." No validation, no function - a dead end of a feature that mimics the same old schlock in the rest of our app.

Which is sad, because Noddy has been given a gift - and was blowing it. All the webforms in our app were built with a common engine. A common engine that was built before we thought about UX at all. As a result, all our forms are uniformly terrible. Improving one form meant doing the heavy lifting of overhauling the entire engine.

But not Noddy's form. Noddy got the greenlight to be a standalone new form. Which means Noddy is free to do all the modern UI they want.

And they're replicating the same old schlock.

Runner has noticed this and is trying to browbeat some quality into Noddy's up-till-now lame-@ss feature. Runner's been appointed the guardian of the style guide and there are so many things that need fixing in our forms - they cannot bear seeing the same crap happen all over again.

Our forms have many problems but two of the newly fixable problems are our multiple required indicators and lack of conditional display.

Our forms have two kinds of required indicators (field is required to save, field is required if you want to mark the document as 'finished'). This is bad enough, but is compounded by the fact that we don't have an indicator for fields that are required to submit the form to Nachen.

Mind you, the whole reason you fill out our forms, is to send them to Nachen. And we don't have required indicators on fields that Nachen requires.

Beyond insane.

If we just add more required indicators, we would end up with THREE different required indicators.

Which simply cannot happen. Since whatever solution we come up with could influence other forms, we call a UX huddle to agree on a first step. Runner, Noddy, myself and Ahhh end up in a room and spell out the problem.

Required to save seems like the easiest indicator to lose. It turns out only two fields of data are required to save a form. One is prefilled, and the other is just a date field.

I've seen other forms with this problem and rather than make you read little symbols on the page to see what needs to be done, they frontload some prerequisite fields and don't let you see the rest of the form until you fill them out.

So, let's put the two required to save fields on a mini form before the main form. Fill out the date field and hit "continue" and we'll show you the rest of the form. Then, once you get to the actual form, you can save at any time. *Poof* 1 less required indicator.

We come up with a conditional display of the Nachen indicators that seems good.

The team seems okay with this as a first shot, and Ahhh (true to form) wants to have a wide ranging discussion of how we will come up with a design language for validation going forward. Ahhh is just compelled to make discussions larger and less fruitful - we call a halt for now and I send out the meeting minutes.

From a possible 3 indicators, we're down to 1, with an option to turn on a second. Not bad for an hour meeting.

* * *

Let's skip to a few weeks later. Noddy's demoing the form with the mini form up front and Ihaq is laying in like a buzzsaw. "I've never seen that before. I'd like to have a discussion about this."

When Ihaq says things like this, you can tell they are not pleased. True, this is a new UI element, but Ihaq is the same SME who thought our previous required indicators were for Nachen fields. This is our Subject Matter Expert - who as worked here for years, misinterpreting the standard interface of our App.

There is no better proof we have a UI problem with required fields.

But back to the UI - the SMEs get to weigh in on their field of expertise, but they don't get to design the interface. That's our job. If the SMEs have a specialist objection to the workflow, like they know the user won't have the required data up front, then sure - we'll listen to them and adjust. But if they just don't like the button, tough bounce.

Post showcase, Gumby asks after the UI, "did we test this?" No, I say, this was a decision that came out of UX. I can tell Gumby is still smarting from being called out in the stakeholder meeting, but there's not much to do about it.

Later, Runner, Noddy, Gumby and Ahhh meet with the SMEs about Nachen work - and Ahhh pulls a reversal. They denying playing any part in making the mini form, despite being in our meeting and agreeing to the approach. Despite the fact that progressive disclosure was something Ahhh had suggested in prior meetings.

I'm irritated and dig up the meeting minutes that show our decision to use the form. I don't send it to Gumby, but I show Runner so they know that Ahhh is full of it. Standing up to the SMEs can be hard, and I can see the pressure to please them - but you can't just surrender the role of UI design. SMEs inform the design, they don't draft it. Ihaq doesn't like the progressive disclosure of the mini form - because it is new. Not because it is a real problem, they just were unprepared for it.

Gumby wants us to vet the entire form in a user test - and our new guy, Dash is supposed to put that together. Heck, at some point I was going to be doing it - but Arwafn blew up and put that to rest. Dash would be great - they are a veteran user tester and completely outside of the design.

A designer should not test their own design. Bad things happen if you do.

Somehow, the test doesn't manage to happen. I'm eye-deep in the Arwafn hairball and forget we were even thinking of testing the form.

* * *

So, a few days ago at standup, Ahhh mentions that they are working on a user test. I'm like great! I love user tests - they are awesome. Sure, sometimes they kick your ass, but they are so worth it. Normal run of things back at CorpWorld was invites would go out to the full team to observe - so everyone can learn from the test.

A test has a primary and a second. Primary runs the show and writes up the findings, with final edit. The second is pretty much there to help with the metric ton of work that a good test requires.

A good test should look effortless to the participant, but getting credible task scenarios is not easy. Getting a working prototype to test those scenarios is pretty frickin hard. And notetaking, and analysis, and on and on....

I don't know who is leaping on all of that, but I'm glad that we'll finally get some user testing done at Nerdhaven. Whoo! Heck, if things calm down in a week or so, I might have time to help out.

The next day, I get an email from Ahhh "I can't get the form to load and I've got a user session in a few hours."

I'm headed out the door to pick up the kids (it's my early day) so after I figure out what they are asking I get QA to help Ahhh out.

User session? WTH?

But I'm out the door.

* * *

Day after that, Ahh is talking about the next user test they're setting up, and there's still problems with the form loading. I can't help myself, I fire up IM: User test? Can you forward the webmeeting link? I'd love to observe? I back off a bit. Or are you recording?

Ahh takes awhile to respond. All the while I'm thinking: How is it that they are holding tests and haven't emailed the team about it. No one else on the team even knew this was happening.

This is weird. Somebody should be helping Ahhh with the test. Not only is this the first user test that Ahhh is doing for NerdHaven - this is the first user test that's been done at NerdHaven. Period.

How is this being done by one person? And our newest UXer, to boot?

Ahh responds with "I'm recording. I'll get you the link." The implication is, I'll get back to you. Now, I don't need to observe in realtime - observers don't get to ask questions normally anyway - too much pressure on the participant. But the tone was bothersome.

Ahhh was at the point of having participants in sessions and nobody had heard a thing. Asked for access, Ahhh has basically said I'll tell you when it's over.

Later that day, Dash sits back from their desk - and snorts.

"I tried to get a hold of Product and they say they are busy because - get this - they are observing Ahh's user test."

WHAT? Okay, people on your team - whose interface you are testing (Dash's prototype is also being tested) have not been allowed to observe - but Product is sitting in.

Nice.

I have a quick client call and end up debriefing with the account Rep on how it went. The Rep's like "No problem, it went fine. I was on that user study with Ahhh earlier and that was a little rough, but it all works out."

I can't help myself - "Can you send me the link to the recording?"

That's sh!tty of me, but Ahhh said they'd send the recording, and they haven't. And really, the recording is made by the rep, so I'm jumping past the middle man.

The rep - in an act of karmic payback - totally forgets to send me the link. They are good people, and I believe this is so - but it is right that I should not get this from some back ally maneuver.

I should get it from Ahhh - directly. And Ahhh is pointedly not giving me, or any other UXer access to their tests.

* * *

I cannot stress enough how bizarre this is. Designers can get pretty prickly about their pet designs, but any designer worth even half a hoot knows you are going to get better design with collaboration.

More to the point, any designer worth considerably less than that knows their own bias is going to hang them if they don't have regular contact with opinions outside their personal bubble.

Ahhh makes much of their history in UX. They have an MBA, they've been doing user research for almost twenty years. I have heard this ad nauseam pretty much every time our team is asked to introduce themselves to some guest. I get it, Ahhh. I do. You are not wet behind the ears when it comes to UX. So why the F*&k are you doing user research in secret?

The ENTIRE POINT of research is to share findings - and while convincing people with research is nigh impossible - it is absolutely impossible if your audience thinks your research came from some black box process.

Erika Hall gave a talk on design research that just blew my mind - not because it's some previously unthought hunk of wisdom, but because it perfectly reveals wisdom that is hiding in plain sight. Research that comes from the mountaintop in the hands of some sage is trivial to dismiss. Sages...amIright? Research that tells a story can resonate. Stories you participate in are far more compelling than stories that are told to you.

If you give a crap about research, watch Erika make it make sense - or buy her book - or both - because I'm going to get back to griping about work.

* * *

So...
Whisky Tango Foxtrot, right? I do not go to the boss, because this is not a discussion that needs management. I haven't confronted Ahhh about the situation, I'm merely asked and not gotten much of a response. I've vowed to be direct about things at this job, and I'm going to do this if it burns every bridge around - because dammit, direct communication should not be a last resort.

I'm neck deep in some Arwafn stuff, when Ahhh gives her standup update as, "I have user testing session today."

What?? Still no upfront notice? Okay, we'll talk, you and I.

I call Ahhh out at standup and ask to be able to observe the test. Ahhh's on the video conference, in front of the entire team. Rather than look petty in front of all of us, they hedge, "If you want to... I guess..."

I do. And I make it known again, that I do. I corner Ahhh on IM and ask them for the web conference link, and book a room on our office to invite the entire UX team.

Ahhh becomes very prickly over IM when I mention that I'm grabbing a room.

"WHO is going to be attending?"

I am upfront to the max. I'll send you a list of the attendees and everyone in the room will understand that we are *observing* not questioning or interfering. We know the drill.

I'm starting to get the sense that Ahhh is afraid they will have some higher up observing them, and they are all kinds of on guard. Which I would understand if we were back in CorpWorld, but this is NerdHaven - we don't do that kind of bullsh!t here. I'm not ambushing you by videoconference, jeezus.

Most of our client contacts are managed by Reps, who maintain client relationships far better than anyone on our team could - so I ask who Ahhh's Rep is on the test.

"Does it matter?" is Ahhs response.

Well, yes - actually. I'd like to invite them to the room I'm booking for the other observers - in case they want to be there.
A lot of Reps do all their conferences from their desk, but some find value in being in a room of people who are also on the call. I'm amazed this has not occurred to Ahhh, but I spell this out.

They icily give me the name of their Rep and sign off.

Well...

So, now I've got a conference room with Runner, Heater, Dash, and the Rep, and we're finally going to observe the test. Irritation aside, I'm actually excited, because tests are exciting. Real users, doing stuff.

w00t!

The session starts up, and Ahhh - twenty years of UX/research etc - is H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E. I don't know any other way to say it. I mean, typically if you have a test, you have scenarios with test data that the participant uses to attempt each task. There are success criteria/ fail criteria. There's a notetaker, there's...

Ahh has nothing. They have the live system and a participant, sure, but "Hey, try to fill out this form" is not a valid set of instructions. Our users - like most users - are truly bad at making up a set of data to fill an ill defined scenario. I'd actually say our users are worse than most, because our users are highly trained, detail oriented, and used to working in incredibly complex environments.

They sweat every detail and anything out of place will have them derailed and talking about bogus data for twenty minutes. They - as a rule - do not make up data. They want to know details before they proceed.

Ahhh has started a 'test' by loading up the mini form and saying 'have at it.'

'Oh, and tell me what you think of what you're seeing....'

The participant is looking at the mini form which is asking for a specific date. They are like 'you want me to make up a date?'

Ahhh is like 'oh sure'

So the participant types in the current date and hits the button to go to the rest of the form.

Ahhh does not ask them what information they would start the task with, nor have they supplied any. They don't ask why they chose today's date, if that would be representative, or where they would get a real date if this were an actual scenario.

What Ahhh does ask about - is the mini form. 'What did you think of that - not seeing the rest of the form until after you put in the date?'

The participant is confused 'uh, it was fine.'

Ahhh asks about this a few more times, phrasing the question differently each time. I'm looking over at Dash like what the...? until I get it.

Ahhh doesn't like the mini form - and they are really hoping that the participant will find fault with it. When that doesn't happen, Ahhh gives them a few more chances, in hopes of hearing what they want to hear.

Which is RULE NUMBER ONE as to why you don't test designs you've had a hand in making if you have any way of avoiding it.

I'm shaking my head when Ahhh asks about a piece of form UI that they designed - and believe is crucial to the workflow. "What do you think of that?'

The participant is confused. They hadn't noticed Ahhh's pet piece of UI until now. 'uh, I dunno.'

Ahhh repeats the question, gets a similar response - then tells the participant what the UI element is and what it is trying to do.

At this point, I'm about to roll my eyes when I catch Dash shaking their head. This is another thing you just DO NOT DO in a user test - if you have any way at all of avoiding it. You do not tell the participant what the interface is, or what it is doing. You let them tell you what they think it is doing. This way you can learn if if it's intuitive or not. As soon as you tell them the answer, you've lost the chance of learning more about the participant's point of view.

Now, there are lots of research techniques for lots of different situations, but this is a user test. The participant's unadulterated behavior is the entire point of the exercise. They may falter, but you do not give them assistance until you've learned what their perspective was without assistance.

Ahhh wants their pet UI validated by the test, and they cannot stop themselves from interfering. They do this repeatedly until Dash and I are absolutely disgusted.

There are no success or fail criteria, no test scenario, so the participant gets to the full form and basically stops doing anything and waits for more information. Ahh pokes them a bit by asking for their thoughts about the form, what they are thinking - typical UX probing techniques. But there is no task, so this is just an airy, off the cuff discussion.

This is not a test. This is a walk in the woods.

"What do you see?"
I see trees. I like trees...

The entire session is just a colossal waste of resources and time. I've worked hard to get access to see this so I can learn more about our users - and all I've learned is that Ahhh is really, seriously bad at testing.

A lot of what Ahhh did in the session would have been fine if it was just an informative interview - "hey, tell us about this" but this was set up to be a test - more to the point - this is being *represented to the organization as a test* and it was nothing of the sort. I'm not confident that the organization is ripe to receive test findings yet, but if they were to get a report based on this load of... crap - I'm not sure what would be worse: accepting it at face value, or tearing into the method.

* * *

And I want to be clear - the mini form is not a design I'm terribly fond of. This is not about pride of ownership - if the participant had trouble with the mini form, I'd cheerfully bin it and move on. Never mind the fact that Ahhh had suggested progressive disclosure like the mini form to solve our validation issues to begin with - then dropped it like it was leprous as soon as Ihaq came out against it.

Ahhh's behavior has me seriously questioning Ahhh's professional integrity. For all appearances, it looks from the outside like Ahhh has kept the UX team outside of their research, while they have been - evidently - seeing what they want to see.

There is no doubt in my mind what Ahhh's conclusions will be at the end of their 'tests.' They will reject the mini-form and completely validate their pet UI element.

And that is just sad. Because that means NerdHaven's first round of user testing has been performed by someone who cannot be trusted to do user research.

And now, having discovered this problem. We are left with the problem of what we are going to do about it.

Carli Lloyd Willed It - Thus, It Is So

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 13:37:00 +0000

I'm just gonna put this here for now... because, DAMN:

Carli Lloyd can do whatever the hell she wants:

Götterdämmerung

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 04:43:00 +0000

Scoreline - June 30, 2015
USA: 2
Lloyd 69' PK; O'Hara 84'
Germany: 0

Biggest match up in women's soccer history.

Everything to prove - against Germany.

And we OWNED them.

Dream Team? Yeah, kinda.

Everybody was playing out of their minds: Holiday, Brian, Sauerbrunn, Krieger, Lloyd, O'Hara, Heath, Rapinoe, Klingenberg, Morgan, Solo....

Oh, and Johnston! Hell, yeah, Johnston - I'd say the player of the tournament - but Lalas said that, and I swore a blood oath to disagree with everything that man says.

Still - Johnston - what a game - offense, defense - and YES - she pulled down an attacker in the box, but the Soccer Gods decreed that this would not stop us.

Johnston: Clearly better than you.

And the crowd... Just magic - Morgan's first big shot wide had the place jumping outta their seats.

Lloyd? Flat out aces. Old Guard? I'm fricking DRIVING this bus.

Swarming midfield, Solo psyching out Sasic...

Yes, Germany can pout about the PK, but they had their chance and blew it. Crappy calls are part of Soccer - and lord knows, the US has had their share. (You think I forget? I FORGET NOTHING).

This was the culmination of the USWNT's campaign. They were on their game against the world's best and beat the crap out of them.

I feared for this team in the group play, but they are clearly on afterburners now.

Go USA.

Rapinoe to Rapinoe

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 02:01:00 +0000

Rapinoe: American badass.

Not our best effort by a long shot. We looked really ragged at the back for most of the first half.

And I don't know if Wambach is putting too much pressure on herself, but two flat our misses by our used-to-be guided missile forward just boggle.

And after a fortuitous bounce goal, Rapinoe looked like she was trying too hard as well. All kinds of whiffed crosses, flubbed passes - even a missed throw in.

And then she does this sh!t:

And this was after getting the ball at the half-way line. She ran half the length of the field, looked up and thought

Well, everyone thinks I'm gonna cross - I'll just shoot this F*&-er.

And boom! Low to the far post, for the icer.

Take NOTHING away from Press & Laroux's efforts to get the go-ahead goal. Leroux is all kinds of hustle and guts, and Press threw down ironclad evidence (if any was needed) that-

COACH?

I AM

A FORWARD

Hell's yeah, she's a forward - and make sure she gets more playing time in the middle, eh coach?

Sad for the Matildas. De Vanna was her usual full-throttle self, she was criminally unmarked in the box and instantly reminded the US why that is a bad thing.

I hope the Aussies get some success, but looking at the rest of their schedule - it's not like it gets easier from here.

Scoreline - June 8, 2015

USA: 3

Rapinoe 12', 78'; Press 61'

Australia: 1

De Vanna 27' (who else, seriously?)

Feels like 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 01:36:00 +0000

Hell yeah, I remember.

122nd minute.

Ian Darke, Julie Foudy and the rest of all right thinking people losing their minds as one.

I just shortened the lives of countless Brazilians.

A fan could live a lifetime for this sport and never get a moment like that.

The Cup doesn't care if you are worthy and the Soccer Gods have always been @ssholes.

Japan was a fairy tale worth telling, but Germany 2011 should have been ours.

And here we are, back for another helping of whatever the Soccer Gods choose to serve us.

Defying reason and the odds, we still have Rapinoe, Rampone - even Wambach.

Germany is - once again - terrorizing the minnows, and the Samba Queens are the same as always.

This time, the French are looking solid and the Dutch look to be the newcomers who could mess things up.

We have injuries, we have scandal, and everyone would love to be the team that sent us home.

Still, I can't wait.

Go USA.

Rapinoe to Wambach for the win.
Always and forever.

Farewell to Megatron

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 16:30:00 +0000

I'm in our stakeholder meeting, a few weeks ago - presenting one of our new features done by the west coast devs and things are not going according to plan.

Being me, I blurt out "That's not right."

In front of a crowd is never the right time to encounter a new bug. Yet it happens.

I try a few more times, before realizing that the app is behaving fine, I've just completely misread what was happening.

I reset, and get the demo done and hand things over to Noddy.

Noddy launches into their part of the demo - a feature that was supposed to be RFD in January that is only now taking tangible shape in code. Noddy's dev's have endured missing requirements, late requirements, incomplete requirements - and late edits when they were still coding.

Noddy has created features with a single requirement - that is wrong. Noddy's feature work has spawned endless "fix it" stories, to correct some omission or other mistake. Each correction will require changes to automated testing, more time and additional expense.

But now, Noddy has landed the first wedge of their feature - and it's...

...it's a mess. The overall problem that this feature is supposed to solve - CANNOT be solved directly by our product. This feature's value rests on the dubious assumption that our users (who hate data entry) will enter data into our application, print out that data, and then re-enter the same data into the Nachen website.

This makes sense to absolutely no one.

Because Noddy has been on this feature, it is being built in incredibly small slices of functionality. Which is agile, but the fact is this feature is a webform. Something as basic as a webform does not need to have a lot of slices to be built by an agile shop.

Sure, you can say, build me the basic form without the ability to validate it. Then validate it. Then make the printout. Then show me how to find all the forms I've filled out. And so on.

Noddy has turned this into story pong, where features are added - then moved, then shifted to other stories, and finally landing in a heap right before a looming deadline.

Noddy's built their form, and it's maybe a third of what it needs to be in order to be a basic, dumb form. The stakeholders are not mean, but they ask pointed questions until Noddy starts deflecting in their usual way. Talking technical and promising future work until people lose interest.

Pinning Noddy down is just too much work sometimes. Even I've given up most of the time.

The meeting ends and I'm off to get a beverage. I meet HockeyTwo in the breakroom. They laugh at my struggles in the demo, but as they put it "at least you fess up to problems. If that had been Noddy? They'd have pressed on, never said a word, and hoped nobody noticed."

It's a remarkable how often a co-worker can (out-of-the-blue) break into a critical observation about Noddy.

* * *

The Noddy effect. It's amazing.

I've been in the hallway and been accosted by co-workers, "GOD, Noddy is just so good at pissing people off, huh?"

I've been at team building exercises that have turned into full blown Noddy venting sessions. One of my co-workers related the story where once, at a work sponsored family fishing outing, their six year old child had caught a fish and wanted to catch-and-release like everyone around them.

Noddy had intervened and told this child (mind you, someone else's six year old child) that "No, that fish is invasive, you need to kill it."

Now, I can imagine saying something along those lines, in the absence of thought. I might do that. But faced (as Noddy was) with a weeping six year old asking Why? Why does my fish have to die?

-most of us would reconsider. Not Noddy. They insisted - to a six year old - that the fish must die.

And on and on. Ad nauseum to anyone unfortunate enough to be near an employee of NerdHaven. Everyone has a Noddy story.

* * *

I leave the breakroom and head back towards my desk, then I remember I have something to check on with Dragonman.

On the way there, I see Atlas talking to Noddy. Atlas wants Noddy to meet with them in their office. Noddy is begging off, they have to do something, but Atlas is insistent, "Right after."

Now, I know Noddy's been on the hot seat for a while now. In fact, most people on UX know that as well. Noddy gets regular meetings with the boss, and a host of performance monitoring activities have become the norm for our entire team.

Hearing Atlas wants to meet with Noddy is filed away.

* * *

The day goes on. I'm back to my desk. Runner, Dash and I have our own little UX Shangri-La, separate from our team, and a genuinely nice setup. Windows, natural light and plant life.

Plus? No Noddy.

Our team hired two more devs and there weren't enough chairs for everyone, so Runner and I volunteered to move to the next room.

Noddy offered to move as well - and BigDog was about to go along with it, logic being move all of the UX crew at once - but Runner shot BigDog a look that could maim.

And BigDog pivoted on a dime. "murph and Runner will move over to the other room." Noddy would end up staying in the team room. In a way, this made the most sense. Noddy would be creating work for the team, while Runner and I were doing work exclusively for the west coast devs.

But mostly, we were sick to the brim of Noddy.

I've thought long (way too long) about what I think of Noddy as a co-worker.

They are not:

Honest
Hardworking
Diligent; or
Professional

Above that, they have a disastrous personality and virtually everyone hates their guts.

Runner deserved a break, and I was happy to get one as well. With the new UXer, Dash - we've got a great thing going. Dash is cool - and a pro.

I miss our devs, but I love our new digs.

I ground out some work for the rest of the day, and was on the way out when I run into OneTwentyEight.

"What's up with Noddy?"

Huh?

"After showcase, they came back, groused something about 'might as well hand in my resignation' and left in a huff."

!!!

This news is positively electric. Nobody wants to call it out as fact, but everyone is thinking it.

Noddy is gone??

* * *

The next day, Noddy is nowhere, and their laptop is missing. Questions are asked at standup, but no one has solid info. Someone thinks that Noddy's child was in the hospital. This is greeted with a certain amount of disappointment.

Later that morning, we get an email from the boss: Noddy has a family emergency and will be out until the next week.

So that's it.

Runner is jubilant. Noddy is gone! But family emergency has me wondering - if they are gone, the boss would just say so. I remember all the crazy with H, that dragged on and they ended up coming back. I don't want to get happy too soon.

But days roll on and Noddy does not come back. Frankly, with Arwafn blowing up and damage control in full swing - I don't notice their absence.

The next week, Gumby tells everyone that Noddy will be gone "indefinitely." This gets all the rumor mills flying, but there's still precious little to go on. Noddy's not here, and we don't know when or if they will be back.

* * *

I speculate openly with HockeyOne & HockeyTwo - towards the end of the week, I'm feeling flip and launch into "I think this may be it." HockeyTwo is skeptical, but clearly thinks this would be great news. Noddy being gone has created a news item, and more than a few water cooler discussions stray into what if?

* * *

And then its Thursday, and I walk into standup late. I've been in some catchup session with Gumby or something or other - I've been running late for everything lately - and I blow into the team room right behind Runner. They look pissed.

The team goes through the standup routine and BigDog is going through their list -

- And I see Noddy back into view. They'd been standing right behind Runner such that I couldn't see them at all.

And there's the answer. When's Noddy coming back? Right now.

And they are back with a vengeance. We get the story on their child being hospitalized - they are okay now, but it sounded like quite an ordeal - and then Noddy is back onto muddling their way through their allotted work. They have meetings with Ihaq, and are working with Ahhh, the new UX in the west coast office.

Ahhh is a special case, and I'm starting to think that Noddy and Ahhh are on the same page. Noddy can wield a firehose of bullsh!t and I'm afraid Ahhh is starting to think Noddy is credible.

For that matter, I'm worried that Ahhh & Dash are going to need the talk about Noddy in the near future. Runner and I have studiously avoided talking to Dash or Ahhh about the Noddy situation. We'd hoped that the situation would be sorted out before it became necessary, but that hasn't happened.

Dash and Ahhh deserve to know that Noddy should not be relied on. That their pronouncements on Nachen work should be double-checked - always.

They need to know that Noddy is borderline useless in a great many ways - but...

How do you start that conversation? I want Dash and Ahhh to make their own conclusions. I don't want to just start in with "Noddy's a useless hump," but I don't know a middle ground. I've punted and avoided the issue. When Dash needs to work with Noddy, Runner and I try to assist.

Dash is no fool, and they have to know that there is a schism between Noddy and the rest of UX - but watching them struggle to collaborate with Noddy is hard. We want to jump in and say "Forget what Noddy is saying, do what you think is right."

The devs hold their fire as well. They are pros, and they are focused on getting work done, not smoothing things out for the new UXers. Sooner or later, they will figure it out on their own.

* * *

I'm running late on a Wed and want to check in with the boss before standup. Gumby's in their office meeting with Portal and Noddy on something, so I head to the desk and chat up Runner.

BigDog strolls into UX Shangri-La.

"One at a time, I need all of you to come to BigSad." BigSad is the main conference room.

Runner & Dash are confused - thinking we are each to go to BigSad by ourselves and then come back before the next person goes.

I took it to mean we were all to go to BigSad, but one by one so as not to make a big deal out of things.

I have a momentary flash of panic. OMG BigDog is leaving! Which would be biblically bad. BigDog is awesome and they are about to have another child. Why would they change jobs? They can't do that to us!

* * *

We make BigSad together, contrary to orders. Most of the team is there. BigDog tells us to close the door and starts in.

"No other way to say this, but to say it..."

Please, no.

Just no.

I love working with BigDog, they are awesome. They are the most supportive dev I have every worked with - and they kill it in the dev space. Their status as team lead has taken them away from the coding they love and they've been clearly frustrated by it... And they've been fed a steady diet of crap work by Noddy.

OMG, Noddy - if you've cost us BigDog, I will personally-

BigDog finishes in a rush.

"Noddy is being let go today. Portal asked me to get the team out of the room so it won't get awkward."

* * *

When the moment finally arrived - it was a total ambush. I was exhausted from the Arwafn grind, terrified that BigDog was leaving, and frankly - numb.

Of course. Portal. Duh. They always do the reaper work.

And today they showed Noddy the door.

Noddy. The person who has caused untold misery and wasted hours - will burden us no longer.

I made an excuse to go to the breakroom and get a beverage. Before coming back, I swung by HockeyTwo.

On the down low, deliverance is at hand.

HockeyTwo nodded somberly. They were totally on the same page.

Back in BigSad, we are told the information is close hold until we hear specifically that it is not.

Oops, already blew that. Odds are good HockeyTwo has at least told HockeyOne.

After a brief stay in BigSad, we are allowed to go back to our desks. Noddy has already been shown the door.

* * *

Official word comes during yet another Arwafn meeting. Gumby sends out an email to our team announcing Noddy no longer works at Nerdhaven.

I'm sitting across from Teacher, who utterly detested Noddy - and have to share. With Gumby's email maximized on screen, I spin my laptop around and offer it to Teacher.

We're on a phone conference, so Teacher keeps composure, but leans over to Juice and relays the news in a whisper. Juice looks at me, eyes wide and I make the touchdown sign.

Somehow, spreading the news makes it real.

This has really happened.

* * *

The team went out for a celebratory lunch, and we read Dash into the situation. Dash took it well. "I guess I don't have to feel bad about wanting to redesign all of Noddy's work, then."

Nope!

Later, I'm in the hall and I run into SnT, a wonderful human being who does great, high stress work and yet still finds time to be amazingly nice.

Did you hear?? I want to say, but SnT's clearly clued in. This news has whipped through NerdHaven like a shockwave.

SnT and I swap Noddy stories for a bit and they're all like "I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but after that whole egg-kicking thing, I just knew they were a total asshole."

To hear someone as generous as SnT launch into profanity is no small thing.

I laugh and share our nickname for him "We called them Noddy."

SnT blinks.

"Because they were always falling asleep."

SnT busts out laughing. "We called them Megatron."

(apparently, Noddy was fond of using a particular buzzword that ended in '-tron' - thus, Megatron).

I bust out laughing, and we stand there laughing in the hall until we have to explain ourselves to a passing co-worker. And then they start laughing.

* * *

And before folks start accusing me and mine of being mean spirited, I would like to offer the following justification.

I tried for over a year to be sympathetic to Noddy. I gather their home life is not easy. But I have watched this person bring misery and additional work to a team I am very fond of for a very long time.

An untold amount of work was wasted cleaning up after Noddy and stepping up to do stuff they should have done.

Noddy added stress and uncertainty to the team - and very little else.

Everyone at NerdHaven gets to be happy that those burdens have been lifted from them.

I can separate any feelings of empathy for Noddy and their family from that. Yes, I hope things don't go too badly for them. I genuinely hope they land on their feet. That they find work that inspires them to actually do the work and not just phone it in.

And I sincerely feel sympathy for Noddy's family.

A family whose chosen breadwinner decided to surf Ebay for collectables rather than do their effing job.

Who, when faced with the prospect of imminent professional death, chose to continue the same half-assed everything that landed them in hot water in the first place.

That family deserves sympathy.

But mostly, I'm happy for my team. The UX lost a staff member and productivity will increase. Morale will improve.

And we will do better work for our customers.

We get to be happy about that.

Free and clear.

Derailment, part IV

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 01:19:00 +0000

That's not Agile!

I cannot tell you how often these words are uttered these days. Arwafn has gone over the cliff, and Nerdhaven has had to publicly walk back from its launch posture of "Wow, look at this!" to the less inspiring message of "Watch this space."

Upper management is involved to an alarming degree.

Faced with the possibility of completely shutting down Arwafn, dev effort was flung at the TURN issue to determine which customers could retain the feature and which could not. The SMEs drew a line in the sand and in the end, about a third of our customers could keep the feature.

Which would be encouraging, if it weren't for the filters. Arwafn has more than a few, and two of them in particular are near total flops. Both are based on fields that customers have never been required to supply. We'd assumed they were, and our limited beta tests looked promising. Data flowed in, and the filters acted on that data.

Trouble was, that data was crap. For some customers, Filter A's key field was being populated only 20% of the time - or was co-mingled with another field, rendering it unusable. In beta, these filters appeared to work, but what they would show was wildly inaccurate.

In beta - our users were not doing a rigorous comparison between their system's data, and what Arwafn was showing. Our users viewed the beta sessions as a preview - play time. And while they surely care about the accuracy of the report - they evaluated Arwafn based on what they imagined it was doing.

Fellow UXers of the world: learn from me. Spell out exactly what you want your beta testers to do. If you need them to do system testing, you need to tell them that. Regardless, you should ensure that your feature has system testing with live data before you green light it for wider release.

But some customers had good data. And there were options for us to explore - an alternate key field might get us there. It would mean an immense amount of re-tooling, though. The thought of it made my mind hurt.

Filter A was the good one.

Filter B was based on a field that not only had issues with being populated only some of the time, when it was populated it was almost always the right kind of data - at the wrong point in time. Filter B is supposed to present its value as of a specific moment - and it was showing a value that was a few days later. And those few days were killing us.

We had a few customers who were happy to get the data at all - even asked for Filter B to be left on despite the time shift - but Arwafn is supposed to follow a standard. A few days later was not the standard. With over 100 clients active on the report, we only found 1 who had a working Filter B.

Worse, when I spoke with Data about our prospects for getting Filter B working, I read out the point in time requirement and Data just groaned. "If we ask the customers to send us an entirely new set of data, we could get closer to what is needed. But the literal criteria for Filter B does not exist in any data element that I know of."

For the millionth time, I ask myself - How is it I am learning this now? How did we get to the point where we have code in production, and I literally just found out that the data point I need does not exist?

And I don't have a good answer for that.

UX was primarily focused on the front end stuff - what the user sees and touches - and the back end stuff (where the digital bodies are buried) was supposedly the realm of other smart people. Our former UXDir encouraged us to provoke the change by asking for things without looking under the hood. "We'll figure it out," they'd say, "we can't design based on just what we have now, or we'll never make new things."

And there is a point there. If every design is vetted against the current codebase, legacy code limits what your customers get.

Fellow UXers of the world: learn from me. If a feature is dependent on a lot of user supplied data, design it to fail gracefully when some or all of those elements don't show up.

That's pretty basic, but its one thing to nod at a good idea in principle, it's quite another to realize that your feature is built on a house of cards while you are working on it. When all of this was happening, it all seemed so...right. And now Arwafn was a pile of roadkill in the middle of the road.

* * *

And everyone was rushing in to help. Which is great, but with upper management calling folks out, the agile culture in NerdHaven was beginning to crack.

Upper management said: Turn off Filters A and B. NOW.

And NerdHaven jumped to obey. Devs created branch code, stopped all other feature work and slammed two shutoff switches for Filters A and B into production. Devs were up in arms, because upper management never tells NerdHaven to work on this feature or that feature - and now they were.

But a fire was burning and this would put it out, so everyone got it done.

Next up was the TURN problem - and dear God what a mess. Telling upper management that the key value for Arwafn is being adulterated by our product was the easy part. Management realized there was a problem and TURN fit that bill. Resources were allocated to fix this issue and commandments were given.

FIX THIS. NOW.

The problem was, as we fixed TURN for Arwafn, we realized that TURN was used all over our product - and fixing it for just Arwafn would mean that other features would be out of synch with Arwafn.

Mind you, I'd always thought of Arwafn as a modest feature - and it is. Just a little report in one corner of the product. But TURN is a value that is used in the NumeroUno feature, and Nachen work, and more besides. I spoke with Sprint when we started fixing TURN and they gave me the full list of what they knew would be affected and it was alarming.

Then, in the middle of one of our situation room meetings for Arwafn, I started spelling that out to the group.

This launched another round of anxiety telephone and soon fixing the TURN issue for Arwafn, became fix TURN everyGoddamnWhere.

Which meant the scope of work just ballooned - which naturally had to be reported up the food chain.

Upper management's response was predictable:

FIX EVERYTHING NOW. AND SWEAR IN BLOOD THAT THIS WILL BE THE LAST OF THE TURN PROBLEMS.

Now, you're an agile dev shop and you get this kind of directive. What do you say to that? There is absolutely no guarantee that we will get everything in one go.

The SMEs are being asked to sign in blood that everything is fine from their perspective - and they are already anxious about the current state of things. They don't see everything and now they want to see EVERYTHING.

We've got SMEs crawling down our necks asking for more access and more analysis. And then Gumby's asked to provide proof that UX has discussed our designs with SMEs (in a meeting, with no warning - so they don't have that information, which itself becomes a thing)...

...and now we're careening towards Waterfall.

Waterfall: an epithet in dev shops. Shorthand for let's add more analysis and more documentation and more signoffs and when that doesn't result in a perfect product - slow down and add still more analysis/docs/signoffs. Lather, rinse, repeat.

All the UX folks hate this idea with a passion, and I pointedly ask if this change is the new way of things going forward, or just until we get Arwafn/TURN fixed.

Gumby is direct, "this is going forward."

I feel like throwing up. Yes, we steered the company in the ditch, but we learned a boatload and absolutely nobody wants to go through that again. We will be more vigilant, and we don't need more goddamn documentation.

I point out (for the umpteenth time) that more SME contact in our process would not have caught our data issues. The SMEs don't go under the hood any more than UX does. But we have experts in house who do, and we will be joined at the hip with them the next time we roll out features driven by client data.

Let's do that, I say, before we get all process heavy. We are already getting berated for being slow, all this bloat is not going to make software happen faster.

Wasn't this why Agile was invented? to prevent this kind of stuff?

But the powers that be are unassailable - we will add process and hope this will get better - or blow over.

Or something.

* * *

Today was a day that threatened to be the end of all things. I was roped into three meetings in a row, one about some future data issue I knew absolutely nothing about, one with the SMEs to discuss their (well aged) laundry list of desired features (that have absolutely nothing to do with Arwafn/TURN), and one that I was dreading most of all: a review of all our Arwafn/TURN work with the SMEs.

The laundry list meeting was a total bust - the SMEs want us to build what they want (as opposed to what Product has prioritized, or what the customers want). Their list of wants will solve issues that the SMEs have experienced, but may not do much to address root causes of user pain. And it is very unclear if all the items on the list should be solved with more computer code. Some might literally be user error. And all of the items are broadly worded concerns that cannot be vetted without specific examples of the behavior in question.

Sprint is in the meeting with Gumby and I and (heroically) volunteers to vet the list for the SMEs. I say (as diplomatically as I can) that this list should be given to our support staff, who can explain the inner workings of the application and perhaps get to the root of the matter without us trying to build a solution based on a speculative issue. I'm not sure the message took, but Gumby and Sprint are clearly way ahead of me. They want to do right by the SMEs, but route support work to support resources.

And then the review meeting. I wanted to keep my hackles in check, but this had all the hallmarks of being a "why did you put the button there?" kind of discussion. One of the SMEs, Ihaq, had ridiculed our design of a new form and I was dreading a new session of "Move that button, because I want you to."

The lead SME was Voldemort: brilliant, hardworking and overworked beyond all reason. They started out with a few probing questions which Gumby fielded for the first few minutes. Ihaq was there and clearly confused about what we would be running through. They had a few questions they wanted to run through before we got started. Ihaq's questions are never brief, and usually involve follow ups.

It was getting awkward.

When we got to the list of feature work, Gumby gave me the podium.

At the risk of appearing arrogant - I am pretty good at explaining things. So long as I understand something, I can transfer that information to pretty much anyone.

And the work we've been neck deep in for the past two months is stuff I can't help but understand. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this stuff.

Grok it? Hell, I wrote it.

And I go to town. You have a question, Ihaq? I got you. Voldemort wants clarity on the hideously technical matter of historical TURN values? I got you, too.

And as soon as I realize that the SMEs are (rather predictably, I might add) solid professionals trying to do their jobs - the tension goes out of the meeting. The SMEs are not there to grill us, or re-design our work - they are literally trying to understand where the work is now and where it will be when we are all done.

Gumby asked our new UXer, Dash, to study our stakeholder demos and they pointed out a host of issues with how we present our work and how it is consumed and retained.

Predictably, shortcomings in our presentations leave lasting misunderstandings in the SMEs as well as others in our organization.

Having this Q and A session allowed us to close that gap for Voldemort and Ihaq at least, and at the end of it - it was a really good feeling.

Voldemort was exultant "That was awesome."

And I cannot tell you how much better that made damn near everything.

Yes, we have a metric sh!t-ton of work ahead of us, but we are beginning to round the corner and we've started to mend things with the SMEs.

The technical work is in flight, the release date is set. Our culture has taken a massive hit to the jaw.

But if today was any indication-

We can do this.

Derailment, part III

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 23 May 2015 02:24:00 +0000

Continued from Part II

I literally go from the airport, to Gumby's office, and thence to G's house to watch basketball. I'm absolutely shredded and a long weekend away from it all could not be better timed.

Hoops with the gang is sacred. I know next to nothing about basketball, but the gang puts up with me anyway. We eat a lot, drink a lot and loaf a lot - which is good for your mental state.

And my mental state needed a helping hand. I'd booked my PTO back when the West Virginia trip was not a threat - then the trip was moved to be right on top of Hoops.

Not cool. I ride out the weekend and soak up the camaraderie. Then I slouch back home to deal with Arwafn.

First there's the anxiety tag: Nerdhaven, like any business, has factions - and the loudest faction at present is the SMEs. The SMEs are frontline staff, up to their eyes in subject matter expertise, but also expected to perform a slew of customer contact, sales & support.

Since they have real jobs, they're not deeply plugged into what goes on back at Nerdhaven, and a lot of the work that our UX team does seems (to them, at least) to come from outer space. There are a lot of reasons for this: distance, iterative design, and a long history of unsatisfactory dealings with UX.

We don't build exactly what they ask for. Largely because every request out of the SMEs starts with a solution. They are smart people, and they know what they want.

Being in UX, we know that any solution causes more problems - and the trick is to look for root causes before you "just build what they ask for." It doesn't mean that UX folks have the answers (lord knows we don't) but our approach is to get more data to see if we can gain enough insight to make a 'big win' kind of solution.

The SMEs don't have time to wait for that kind of thing. They need answers yesterday - and are confident that their chosen approach will begin paying off immediately. They may be right - but one of the things we hear from our end users is classic alert fatigue: the users have more warnings then they have time to respond to. And a lot of the requests from SMEs amount to 'gimme a new alert option.'

Its difficult, and frequently frustrating for both UX and the SMEs and I don't see a good way out of it.

* * *

With that bit of background, you can appreciate the amount of anxiety tag that is ripping through the SMEs after the launch of Arwafn. They've done demos of the report in front of clients. They've described its many features and clients have oooohed and aaaaaaahed. And now the product has been flipped on for their clients and the result is a big, wet, thud.

And it's the SME on the horn or in the room with the client having to take the abuse, not me. Nobody in UX is on the phone with a baffled customer trying to explain why their numbers don't add up. Historically, the SMEs have to run with whatever features make it out of UX and they quickly share the skinny on what they've seen so they can go into client contact forewarned and forearmed.

I'm eventually cc'ed on a series of messages between the SMEs "Did you hear? This filter is a failure across the board!!" and that SME tells the next one, and the next - and soon you have a whirlwind of anxiety making its way to the higher ups.

The higher ups have seen this movie - and they rapidly direct their power on various minions who are ordered to bring them clarity about what the hell is going on. One of the higher ups is Gumby, new to Nerdhaven and that means I'm getting pulled into their office and other meetings to explain everything I know in detail.

I spell it out over and over again. I state my mistakes and assessment of where the product is at the moment. I spell out the issue with TURN codes and list out a half dozen other things that could be made to work better.

Then I do it again in front of the the execs. I have to go before the Wizard, who is mighty, but never really says much. I live in mortal terror of having to go before MGM, who is mightier still, but those fears are thankfully not realized.

Airing the TURN issue in front of this crowd means we are going to fix the issue. HockeyOne will be happy, Ajax will be relieved, and our client's data will at last be made whole.

And the exec level folks will make our lives an unending hell until all of this is done.

Product is leaving the company - completely unrelated to this situation, they just got a VP gig elsewhere, so this 'fix the Arwafn' effort is going to need a point person.

Absolutely no one volunteers. So, after a loooooong pause, Gumby raises a hand.

As the newest manager at Nerdhaven, Gumby has a free pass in the situation. They had nothing to do with what has happened up until now. Their role is enthusiastically endorsed by a roomful of cowards.

* * *

The boss is in this up to their neck, and UX is now on the hook in a larger sense. Gumby has to prevail.

And Nerdhaven has to fix Arwafn. All of it.

Derailment, part II

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 May 2015 04:38:00 +0000

Continuing from Part I

Arwafn is coming undone. And for a reason I first started hearing about a month after I came to Nerdhaven.

One of the base data elements of Arwafn is something I'll call TURN. TURN is a series of codes that factor into the key datapoint of the Arwafn report. Calling it the lynchpin of the report would not be overstating it. The customer sends Nerdhaven TURN codes and we group them, count them, and make them look beautiful.

Classically, a TURN code is a single character value. Like T, or U, or R, or N. And Nerdhaven's process is built on this standard.

Single character come in, single character go into database. Arwafn is happy.

But what if TURN comes in as multiple characters?

Instead of T, let's say it comes in as T<*

Then what?

This question had been posed and answered for me by Noddy. Noddy had raised an issue about multichar TURN codes in their usual manner: Airily, arrogantly "raising a concern" via email to a slew of senior staff. Runner and I were cc'ed so we would be aware of his brilliance.

Look at me!

That's Noddy, and the truth is - its hurts their message, since the resulting eyeroll drowns out the content. But the issue sounded serious.

According to Noddy, when a multi-character TURN code came in to a system I'll call Dragon, it would get truncated. Dragon would take just the first character and bin everything else.

T<* would become simply, T.

And that didn't sound so bad, and really wasn't bad, until new values were added to the TURN code like NO and TDD. These were values that were distinct from T, U, R, and N.

But if Noddy was right, Dragon would take an incoming code like TDD and convert it to T. NO would become N.

And that really would be a problem. Because now our system would be adulterating client data - and that is not cool. Arwafn would be inaccurate, and other features in our product would be wrong as well. TURN is deep, deep in the works. And Noddy wants us to know he's found this problem.

I remember Heater responding to Noddy's initial email. Heater had a few stories written up to deal with this issue - they'd never been given priority before, but maybe now the time was ri-

Dragonman kills that noise almost immediately. Dragonman is lead dev on the Dragon system, and his response took the wind out of Noddy & Heater.

Here's a count of all the incoming TURNs we've received in the past two months: out of millions of messages, we're only gettting a few hundred N values. Even if all of them were really 'NO' values, its a negligible amount of data.

In other words, Dragonman was saying this is not a problem.

Heater lives in fear of Dragonman, and Noddy never follows up on anything. So that was enough to make them drop the issue.

I'd remember talking with UXDir and they were frustrated that we weren't fixing this issue. "We shouldn't treat this like a tech support call! Who cares if there isn't a lot of volume now? We should make this right, so we future proof the system!"

I also remember talking to Product & suggesting that supporting longer TURN values might be a selling point for our product. Product said we didn't have any data to support that it would be worth it. Between that and the technical pushback, the idea was buried.

Yeah, we truncated the TURN codes, but it didn't matter enough to warrant allocating dev resources to fix it.

* * *

That answer became the party line: We truncate, but so what?

Months later, even I used that line to shoot down Suit when they tried to grandstand on the discovery that OMG, we're truncating TURN values!

Suit was engaging in that same chicken little exercise where "lookee everybody! I found a problem (and gosh, aren't I smart?)" and I was in no mood. I forwarded Dragonman's original response on TURN to Suit and cc'ed about everyone. This is a crap issue, leave it alone.

I felt proud of myself, too. I knew what was going on under the hood with TURN. It's no big deal.

* * *

Rewind to about five months ago. I'm on the phone with Goldeagle, one of our beta testers, and they are looking at their version of Arwafn and they are confused.

The numbers for this item just look wrong. It's way too high, and I think the count is off.

I'd seen this before, but it had always been a setting problem. The user had misconfigured things and broke the output. But a quick check showed that Goldeagle had the settings right. The numbers were just wrong. I told them I would figure out what the problem was.

This was weeks after Arwafn went live to over 100 customers. And this was definitely not good.

I asked BigDog to give me the under the hood data for Goldeagle's report. I do the math and everything adds up to the same crappy numbers Goldeagle was wondering about. And I notice a pattern in the data: the calculation is based on the occurrence of T's out of the total of T's, U's, and R's.

And there are no R's at all.

Which is odd, because Arwafn is report that spans a year or more. In the course of a year, for this particular datapoint - there should be at least an R here and there.

I check again. None.

As all the data I'm looking at is in the Guardian database, I wonder if we're screwing things up somewhere upstream: in Dragon, maybe.

But Dragon doesn't hold data, they take incoming values and slot them into our Guardian db. True, Dragon would be the place where we are truncating TURN codes, but truncating still passes something and I was seeing no Rs at all. Was there a process that was eating the Rs?

And why was it only for this one record? Arwafn has dozens of record lines, each crossing columns with other values. And only this one combination was showing this total lack of Rs.

What the hell?

At this point, I trot over to the other side of the building and visit HockeyOne. They are a code slinger, an expert on incoming client data, and they're one of the folks that are always asking me painful questions when I'm showcasing new features.

HockeyOne lives and breathes in another system that is upstream of Dragon. It's called Lizard. And Lizard is very low level stuff, grabbing up massive volumes of text files sent by our clients and flinging them into the jaws of Dragon.

HockeyOne is a guru of all things Lizard and I start asking them if they have any idea what could be happening to my missing Rs. HockeyOne looks at me with a sort of amused smile and says "have you looked at the KIM fields?"

No. KIM fields are not TURN fields, why the hell would I look there?

"Because if the TURN is too long to go into Dragon, we'll append it to the end of a KIM field and pass a blank TURN value."

Shut
the
front
door.

HockeyOne goes on to explain the problem. Lizard wants to pass all TURN values to Dragon, but it will get an error if it tries to pass a TURN that is longer than 1 character, since Dragon will only take a 1 char TURN code.

Rather than give up, Lizard will look for a neighboring field, KIM, and append the TURN value to it so the data has somewhere to go in Dragon. Lizard doesn't truncate the TURN, it puts it elswhere and passes nothing at all to the TURN code in Dragon.

I start to sweat. "Can you run a query to show me what kinds of extra noise is getting tacked on to Goldeagle's KIM field?"

HockeyOne says "sure!" and writes up byzantine query in a few minutes. They show me a list of values that are in the KIM field, but supposedly came in as values in TURN:

BLES
UB
CLAB

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I've never heard of these values coming across in TURN. I ask HockeyOne to make sure - absolutely sure - these values exist in the client's messages to our system. HockeyOne goes deep into the weeds to show me - that these are real values Goldeagle is sending to us AND that they are sending to as as TURN codes.

I ask for samples that prove this, so I can show them to others. HockeyOne has just demonstrated that we are NOT truncating TURN codes, we are moving them elsewhere. Which to downstream features like Arwafn, is essentially the same thing as deleting them, since Arwafn is looking at the TURN field, which ends up blank every time one of these multicharacter values bounces off Dragon's front door.

HockeyOne is excited. They've always hated the fact that Lizard was shoving data in weird places, and they've asked repeatedly for Dragon to take longer values and store them. They give me all kinds of examples of what is going on in Goldeagle's incoming messages - and I find front end examples of this data mangling so I can sell this as a real issue.

Then I get back with Goldeagle, and ask them what is going on with these other codes. What do they mean? and why are they being sent in a field that should only have 6 discrete values?

Goldeagle tells me that their system uses those other values to track TURN as well as an entirely different dimension called BLES. In their system, the code BLES = R and also has some additional meaning as well. UB is also the equivalent of R.

Which means I've found my missing R values, they are being sent as multichar values in TURN, which means Lizard isn't putting them into our db as TURN values, because Dragon won't let them.

Which means Arwafn is pretty much screwed at this point, because Arwafn only sees TURN values in the Guardian database. If multichar TURN values aren't landing in Guardian's TURN field, they might as well not exist - because to Arwafn - they don't.

I ask HockeyOne how often Lizard would move TURN values into KIM and send a blank value in TURN to Dragon. I mean, I'd always been told we truncate.

HockeyOne is pretty sure that we do this for a majority of our sites. Which means that Goldeagle has a lot of company. And a lot of our Arwafn customers are going to be missing data.

I flip out and go to Data and Heater and declare that the sky is falling. Data tells me that what I am saying is inaccurate. "We truncate."

I show them the messages. "No, we don't. At least not for this site."

My equivocation doesn't help my case. I may have just found an outlier. I email a wider group and provoke an exasperated response from Ajax, who is the sheriff of these kinds of data issues. Ajax is a supremely competent person and they tell me that I'm describing the situation wrong. That any moving of data into different fields would require changes that they would be aware of. And they have seen no such changes.

I take this as "murph, you are full of sh!t" and as I have only one site as a datapoint, I can't press much further. I get more data by hitting up OneTwentyEight to run HockeyOne's byzantine query against all of my beta sites.

More long TURN values show up, noisier ones like "NEG" and "POS" and a slew of things that look like equations. I run this past Data and Sprint and start to get some traction.

Sprint (who is awesome) runs ahead and sorts out a list of what chunks of work would need to be done to get these longer values into our system correctly.

We get Dragonman into the fold and a reasonable solution is proposed. Dragon will create a path for longer values to make it into Guardian. We draft up a list of work to present to Product.

We're on the verge of pitching this plan when all hell breaks lose on Arwafn.

I'm in West Virginia getting an alarmed email message from Product asking what the hell is going on with Arwafn. I'm wrung out from a long day of client visits yet completely unable to sleep - and so I lie in bed and type an epic mea culpa with my thumbs. We didn't go under the hood enough when we were in beta. This is over and above the TURN problem, but this starts the crazy train rolling.

I fly back home and drive straight to the office from the airport and see Gumby and Atlas clearly having a strategy meeting. I make myself available and soon we are in stage one of responding to an epic managerial sh!tshow.

The executives have heard that Arwafn isn't all it was cracked up to be and they are demanding answers.

The execs are flipping out about filters on the report not working - and they are pissed.

And at this point, they have no idea about the issues with TURN.

Its about to get a whole lot worse.

Derailment, part I

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 01:30:00 +0000

All at once, work is exhilarating and terrible.

Arwafn is rolling out to the world, and while the internal reviews are good - the only score that counts is the one you get from the end users.

The early reports are the worst. Not because they are bad, but because they usually represent incomplete opinions, initial reactions - delight in something new. They are passed along by hopeful co-workers who want to believe the same thing I do: that it has worked. That our customers are pleased with what we've done.

Somehow, I always manage to fall for this. I supposed to be dispassionate, but after a year of working on the project, I want success. I want happy customers.

And so I flatter myself to think that this time, we did it right.

And then the second round of reviews roll in.

Second round is usually polite, deferential even. "Hey, I'm wondering about this bit here..."

By the third round, you know you have problems, and you start looking for patterns. This is not a drill. You'll need to fix this.

Bin the ego and lean into this, because it's going to hurt.

"Customer has some questions about this filter. It doesn't seem to work"

"...numbers aren't adding up. They want to know why..."

Third, round - the co-workers have stopped being nice. They want to know what the problem is. And how those problems managed to make it through QA and beta testing.

There is no worse feeling in UX than watching a customer delight in seeing what they wanted to see - and then watch them realize their mistake.

Oh...I guess that isn't working.

* * *

The flaw in Arwafn that managed to make it all the way into production is the most maddening of all. Arwafn relies on customer supplied data - in the form of a data feed.

Data flows from a client's system and flows into Arwafn. Arwafn turns the tidal wave of data into an intelligible grid and allows the user to manipulate it in several ways. We've checked the design against the industry standards, we've verified that the added functionality was wanted by the customers - we've set up beta testers with their live data in Arwafn and let them play with it to get their responses.

And we've had QA try to beat it to death with everything short of a tire iron.

Arwafn came through all that. The board was green.

But we'd missed something - something that was admittedly pretty hard to quantify, but something that we could have noticed earlier.

The client data feeds are crap.

We were like engineers building a colossal aqueduct across miles of countryside and then aiming it at a dry lake.

Or, more accurately, a bog.

Some customers follow the agreed on specification for supplying the data and - for them - all is well. But for a still to be determined group of customers, they send us garbage - and for them, Arwafn is smelling pretty foul.

And it's no good pointing the finger back at our clients. We told them Arwafn was a new feature - we did not tell them it might work if your data isn't godawful.

Nor did we design the report to degrade gracefully. That principle I began learning with regards to crap browsers ages ago was noticeably absent when I baked out the stories to build this report.

It's a basic idea - and yet I'm re-learning it for the umpteenth time:

Okay, it works when A, B and C are present. What if I take away A?

Easy. It looks like it's still working - but isn't.

What if I take away B?

Same thing.

And so on. Any of those questions getting some real thought would have resulted in what NerdHaven is now rapidly deploying to the field. Switches to enable the functionality dependent on A.

Don't have A? We'll shut that off for you.
No B? We'll turn that off, too.

The rest will still work.

That's how it should have been designed from the get go, but in my naiveté thought "Of course, they'll all be sending us this information. How could they not?"

And they're not. Or rather, I wish they just weren't - that would have been easy to spot.

When we did beta sites, no data would have resulted in obvious failures. But that didn't happen. We had data flowing into our UI, and the dependent features worked as expected.

Did we ask users to go through our report line by line to ensure accuracy?

We did not.

Did we ask our internal experts to crawl around under the hood of our beta sites?

We did not.

All of this, every new expression of the problem, slams home into whatever professional pride I'd managed to save up. Three weeks ago, Runner and I were heroes. Now, I'm being forwarded emails from our SMEs where they are describing Arwafn's failings in scathing terms. I'd have hoped I would have been included in those messages when they were sent, but I get them secondhand. After they've been routed through management.

Atlas has been unfazed by this - they point out we've had data issues in the past, and the scope of the issue is being overblown. I feel genuinely ill. Atlas and Gumby finished up my performance reviews before this all blew up. I came out really well in their eyes. I was proud.

And now this. The folks who sang my praises are now being hauled in front of the executive leadership team.

And there is something else. Something that goes beyond a customer sending us crap data.

Something I'd heard about and went after.... just way too late.

Goddammit

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 03:37:00 +0000

Pwned

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 04:23:00 +0000

murph
To: C

Need to ask you a question...but it's one with some consequence.

Have you tried to post a comment on my blog in the last week, posing as someone called Noddy?

I've been slagging on Noddy (a co worker) on my blog - and I believe they've managed to stumble across my blog.

You've pranked me on my blog in the past - and if it really was you, it would be a genuine relief.

Let me know when you can,

thanks.

* * *

CTo: murph

What? That would be bad.That’s why I had to post as Noddy. Gotcha.

C.

* * *

Kinda makes me wish I'd contacted C before I'd ended up telling my co-workers about my blog at the holiday party.

#Facepalm