A Good Craftsman Never Blames His Tools
I guess at some point, its inevitable that any large professional organization will realize that if they want projects to be implemented properly, they had better choose a software tool that's somewhat more intuitive than Excel spreadsheets and email. That has happened at my company and lo and behold my organization is making the same mistakes that every company makes when choosing to take on this type of initiative. No project management software tool is perfect. What you get out of them, is what you put into them. If your process is crappy, a shiny new software tool won't magically make the process better. What it does, ironically, is further point out your team's deficiencies. So too with my team today.
We've been trying to implement CA's answer to project management prowess, a product called Clarity. The transition has been slow, so management decided to have everyone take a day and have every Project Manager painstakingly enter in the foundations of their respective projects. It was grueling and it took all day. The bad part, however, is what it did to morale. People all over the place were complaining about Clarity. "Clarity sucks" was the theme of the day. It was sad.
But I didn't buy the devastating attitude. I learned a long time ago that fighting against a manager's initiatives toward a new software project is an easy way to be put on the troublemaker list. So I wandered around with a smile on my face knowing that the only way to get by is to embrace the initiative. Nobody else has the same attitude.
Thanks to blogging, though, I have an outlet. I can vent all I want here and nobody will ever read it. So in the spirit of despising Clarity, I've come up with my top ten nicknames for the cumbersome nightmare of a product.
10. Non-Clarity
9. UnClear
8. No-Clarity
7. Sans Clarity
6. Opaque Clarity
5. Don't vote for Hillary
4. Un-Clarity
3. Clarityless
2. CA? Who the hell bought that shit? Think I don't know that CA was probably the cheapest piece of shit out there? All CA products are cheap pieces of shit. That's why they're products are cheap because their shit. That's why they're called cheap pieces of shit.
And the number one new nickname for Clarity is:
1. Parity
But according to everyone at my company, I'm championing the product. As far as I'm concerned:
"Don't vote for Hillary is the tool that will most likely save the world".
posted by Ron at 3/14/2007 09:47:00 PM
2 Comments:
First and foremost, let me say that I'm surprised and shocked that you've chosen to single out Hillary as the #1 person for whom you should not cast your vote.
Before I go further, let me say that I'm not even registered. So far, in this election, I'm taking the same stand I took last time 'round: the only vote wasted is the vote cast. Until the government decides to give someone other than Republicans and Democrats the podium at debates and such, I'm done with the system, because, really, what's the difference?
Now - if your answer to my initial question (why is Hillary the person least worthy of your vote?) is that you hate chicks with fat ankles, then, fine. What can you do? It's hard to argue with her "sturdiness"...but, beyond that, is there really that much difference between her and the other candidates (republican and democrat)? I'm not talking about their views on individual issues - I'm talking about as a whole....
In the end, to me, they're all a bunch of chumps, which is why I want to hear more about what other people have to say outside the "2" parties that seem be given more credibility in this country than the others. It's the same reason I voted for Perot when I had the chance. Yah, I know he was nutty, and I didn't expect him to win, but I wanted to let the mofo system know that there are other parties out there.
So, for now, I will refrain from "wasting my vote", and remain unregistered in the horrendous state in which I reside.
As for the software, well, suck it up. We all been there. The key to being "valuable" is rolling with it and making the project successful despite "inferior tools". I think this is the approach your taking as indicated by the title of this post. Take the proverbial lemons and make lemonade.
In the end, honkeytoast, you'll realize that software has value for some reasons and in spite of some reasons, and the key is to tap into the things it does well and downplay the things it does poorly.
Of course, you and I both know that none of this will get you laid, which begs the question: why are any of us doing this in the first place?
Why indeed.
Dude...?
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