Ghost software and other stories

As I said in other posts, I am now in an important insurance company taking care of the organization of users in functional groups for the LDAP server. This allows me to be in constant contact with the managers of all the main application the company’s business is based on, the main majority of them being developed for at least 3 years already.

This made me a privileged spectator (sometimes actor) of rather curious situations.  I am going to try to share here some of them.

The ghost application:

I had a meeting with a software department director. He was in charge of the whole development an maintaining cycle of all applications since more than 10 years already. The meeting  was supposed to be about an application (let’s call it X) whose users I needed to identify.

I arrived to the meeting and the first thing he did, after introducing himself, was to tell me he did not know what i was talking about. I explained him the context of my project, and after making a long phone call, he told me:

“Ok, I know what you are talking about now. You know, the problem is we have an application  that is running since 1992 in a UNIX server. It is the key application in our department, as it tracks all contracts and money flow. The problem is, no one has ever given it a name. When it was developed it was known as The Application. Later on, changing server admins have given different names to the application. Even the director has tried once to impose a name for this hidden monster, but without much success. Thus, by lacking name, it has many names, a different one for each person.”

How can they base their business on a ghost application? It is a mystery  I did not try to solve…

Copycat:

I was faced by an opposite situation  when, after looking to the list the Security department provided me with and meeting with the corresponding manager of application Y, he looked at me and told me he did not know what I was talking about.

I waited a bit for the phone call but, seeing he was not going to call anyone, I asked him the logical question: “Why?”

His answer was just as logical: “Because we have several applications with same name Y. Each one  does a different thing in a different department with different users!”

When I asked him how they managed to differentiate among them, he just told me  they didn’t. Depending of the context, it differentiated itself. With luck…

Who knows?

I was in charge of collecting the different users for an application. After talking with a software manager, he redirected me with the person from the business department he had talked about requirements for the last two years. He was sure she would be able to identify the users. After all, the application was mainly for her, wasn’t it?

But I got a different story:

Her: “No, I can not help you”

Me: “Mmm… ok, sorry. maybe you know who can help me then”

H: “No, I don’t know.”

M: “Mmm… ok. So could  you please tell me who has been responsible for the definition of requirements?”

H: “It’s me.” 

M: “Then you must know who will access your application, or at least someone that knows that!”

H: “Well… I can not help you.”

M: “You do realize that in less than four weeks the application is going life. And that without users there is no application, right?”

H: “Well… yeah. But I can not help you.”

Right… 

Holidays:

Last week, just before Easter Holidays, was a hard week for people at work. Some parts of the project started being late, with repetitive errors and unpardonable delays. The big bosses of the security team got together and realized the criticality of the situation. And they took all the relevant decisions:

• All the technicians would be working during the holidays.
• One or more consultants would supervise their work.
• They would supervise the consultants. From their holiday place.

Yeah, that’s right. They were in the middle of a crisis, three weeks before a four year effort goes life, and they take holidays.

But what was their logic then? It was this:

“Up to now, we have been late in many other projects. And it has always worked fine.”

Yeah… but thanks to consultants again? That’s just sad…