eldar | Tuesday (Reply)

Got up early, went to work, worked, came home. A long day at work, too. Made up my flex balance (to -10 hours - I still have to shift those 10 hours...). I spent a good part of the afternoon retrospectively updating a spec that a few other people (myself included, I have to add - but not to such a significant a degree as others) hadn't done. We're also introducing yet another layer of bureaucracy into our Byzantine call lifecycle:

1. Call gets sent to the Helpdesk.
2. Call gets authorised by appropriate management, if necessary.
3. Call gets raised on the Helpdesk and is handed to the relevant supervisor.
4. Call gets authorised for initial review, if necessary.
5. Call gets allocated to a developer for initial review.
6. Developer decides if call can be developed immediately ('fast-tracked'), in which case an estimate is raised for approval, proceed to Step 11. Call may be closed at this stage for a variety of reasons. More likely, a spec will be produced. Usually this will require more time than is allocated for Initial Review, so an investigation estimate is raised.
7. Investigation estimate is approved by appropriate management.
8. Further investigation by the developer, resulting in a spec.
9. Spec is checked over by appropriate supervisor.
10. Spec is sent to technical group for appraisal/comments/approval.
11. Development estimate is authorised.
12. Handed to (possibly different) developer for developing. This developer will also test his own work.
13. Handed to another developer (often the one who produced the spec) for independent unit testing.
14. Code checking.
15. Release note is filled in and checked by a supervisor.
16. Call released to Test system for system testing.
17. System testing.
18. 'Pack Note' produced for someone to check dependencies, cross-references, etc. to decide which release pack to release call into.
19. Call is closed and released.

Right, so that's what the lifecycle was up until today. As of tomorrow, part of the initial review and/or investigation will be to produce an overview document, instead of a specification, along with estimates for producing the full spec, development, testing, etc. which must be approved before the full spec, which now becomes part of the development time rather than the investigation, can be completed. The spec, once complete, probably with revised development estimates, is then approved for development. And so on.

Which basically means that for someone like myself (a 'Senior Analyst Programmer'), the 'Programmer' bit of my job description (the bit I enjoy and signed on for...) is going to be even more reduced by red tape and documentation.

I also got sent my self appraisal form to fill in. I may mention my grievances in it.