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<\/a><\/span>The first time your boss comes into your office and gives you grief because it looks like you only did 7 hours of work yesterday, you\u2019re going to make sure that <\/em>never happens again. And then, suddenly, behold, the timesheets show everyone working 12 hour days, and all the data in the timesheets becomes instantly bogus. And EBS<\/a>, our statistical technique for predicting ship dates, suddenly stops working, because you\u2019re feeding it data that is meant to get your boss to stop bugging you, not accurate data.<\/p>\nNow, this theory may be completely off the wall, but it is our theory, and until we hear something better, that\u2019s the one we\u2019re going with.<\/p>\n
So our policy has been that if you want to get the timesheet data, well, yes, you can, we\u2019ll give you a way to get it in CSV format or XML format or something and then you can abuse it all you want… go ahead, hang yourself, but we\u2019re sure as heck not going to make it easy for you with a pretty report all tied up with a bow that you might click on by accident, as you browse around, because thou shalt not put a stumbling block before the blind.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I said to Dan, \u201cWhat the heck? Who on earth approved that<\/em> feature?\u201d and walked down the hall to the FogBugz team to beg them not to do it. Correction: I razor-scootered<\/em> down the hall. It\u2019s extremely undignified; I\u2019m way too old for childish toys; but jeez it\u2019s like a whole city block from my office to the FogBugz team\u2019s office, so, OK, it\u2019s pathetic, but razor scooting is the fastest way to get there.<\/p>\n I am not sure what the FogBugz team will decide… it\u2019s their call, not mine. Apparently nice people email us and ask for that exact feature and offer to give us little green rectangular things that can be exchanged for other goods and services if we do the feature. So it\u2019s a dilemma, and I\u2019m the one who knows the least about it, so I hope they won\u2019t listen to me. Well, secretly, I hope they will, but don\u2019t tell them that. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n But anyway… that\u2019s not the point of the story. The point of the story is that today I was reviewing some video footage to see if there was anything worth including in the next documentary Lerone<\/a> is making about software development. And the footage I was reviewing was of a meeting several weeks ago to go over the final list of features for FogBugz 7 and make sure they all had the right priorities assigned to them.<\/p>\n And there, on the video, I had to watch myself listening to Babak explaining the timesheet reporting plug-in, and the record shows that I appeared to understand what was being said to me, and, I\u2019m afraid to admit, I appear to have given my tacit approval to the feature.<\/p>\n AHEM.<\/p>\n In short, I\u2019m turning into one of those crazy bosses that approves things, and then gets upset when you do them. This keeps happening. I must be driving people crazy<\/em>.<\/p>\n In my defense, usually what happens is that the thing<\/em> is described to me in general, vague terms and it sounds great, and I say, \u201csounds great!\u201d and then I see the thing a little bit closer, and it\u2019s awful, and by this time, I\u2019ve forgotten about the time I said it sounds great. Just assume I have amnesia or something. I can\u2019t form new memories. Did I tell you about the razor scooter yet? OH IT\u2019S FUN.<\/p>\n The solution, of course, is what I\u2019ve been saying all along. STOP FRIGGIN\u2019 LISTENING TO ME. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about. If you work for me, you\u2019re welcome to get my advice, but you have to make your own decision because chances are you\u2019ve thought MUCH MORE about the issue than I have and in fact we probably hired you because you\u2019re smarter than I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"