Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
In a recent meeting with my client, we discovered we missed out on a Detail of User Story, that has already been implemented several iterations before.
The new requirement is not only an additional Feature but changed behaviour.
The original User Story goes like:
"Can View XYZ"
The new request however goes like:
"Can View XYZ but if B then XYZ must look like ABC"
Shall i consider this a Bug or a New User Story, or should i simply reopen the old user Story and edit it to account for the new request?
What is the "best-practice", what are pros and cons of each approach?
Well, since it is a new requirement, treat it as a new feature request. Definitely not a bug.
EDIT: Since it is not clear who missed the detail either you or the customer, you can take both ways. If you forgot about it, then it is your bug. If the customer forgot to tell about it, then it depends. If it is a little fix, you can reopen the old story. If it is much work to be done, make it a new one.
P.S. Does it really matter how you do it? The point is just implement it like the customer asks, regardless of your internal terminology.
(source: oracle-guy.com)
A Bug, a new User Story, reopening the old Story... is that really important? In any case, your customer is asking for a feature that is currently not implemented. So, as long as you can estimate its size and as long as he can prioritize it, it doesn't really matter how you call the way you capture the needs.
So, unless you have to deal with specific contractual constraints, just pick one solution, estimate the size and let the customer prioritize it (personally, I'd create a new user story).
I would edit the old story to document the modification. Otherwise you may have contradictions between the new story and the old one.
This can hardly be considered as a defect (or bug) if the customer changed its mind.
Be pragmatic: estimate it, schedule it and implement it.
I would say this should count as the old story. Your team should report reduced throughput (velocity) because of these changing requirements, especially if the original feature has not already shipped.
Related
Closed. This question needs details or clarity. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Add details and clarify the problem by editing this post.
Closed 4 years ago.
Improve this question
All,
I'm interested in the ability to retrieve a specific element within a FHIR resource using a single URL call. For example, suppose I'm interested in the gender of my patients. I would read the using the URL, without having to walk the XML node path every time. Right now, this functionality does not appear to exist. What do you think about the usefulness of this? Would like to get a sense of the community interest. Thanks.
-Jeff
For the default query mechanism, you can't bring anything back other than the full resource. (And don't even have a guarantee that the desired element will be present on all instances of the resource unless that element was part of your search criteria - in which case, why bother asking? :>). There's a new mechanism for defining custom queries. Refer to _query in the search/query section of the FHIR spec. However, it's not clear whether this will allow retrieval of anything other than full resource instances either.
This functionality does not exist at this time. It's on the wishlist, and we're trying to decide whether we can frame it in a sensible and safe fashion. The case you describe is relatively obvious, but many others aren't. And, in fact, when I think about it, it's not really clear to me how it works. what do you get back? just the gender element? so the server needs to - in effect - do the node walk for you, and you get, instead, to deal with a profusion of different schemas. It's not really obvious to me that this is a net saving for the client, and it's certainly a greater cost for the server.
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
After fighting several versions of the CoreKeyGen created by some "minamoto" guy, a new version has appeared. This version is particularly sophisticated and seems to modify the actual binary itself, using a dylib known as libbassmod.dylib (this is in the keygen's Mac OS folder).
Has anyone ever come across this & can give me advice on how to stop it?
If so, how can I stop the keygen? it seems like the library can see what calls my app makes and stop them somehow, I'm not too sure.
I doubt that the "Minamoto" here is the real guy you are looking for, maybe just someone wanted to making fun of you. People in the scene won't have the time to read the post here, nor reply under their real nick.
Back to your questions, libbassmod.dylib is used for audio module playback. It's often used in windows key generaters by the Scene to play audio module formats such as XM, IT, S3M, MOD, MTM, UMX. more info you can read up here:
http://www.un4seen.com/
And about the idea of fighting them or making fun of them in your blog, IMO it will only bring you troubles(Espicially some groups like this one, CORE(which stands for "Challenge Of Reverse Engineering"), google for it if you want to know more about it).
Enough said, if I were you, I'd put my time on making my applications better instead of coding protections. That's the right and only way to get more customers(And believe me they hate software protections). Those who use cracks will never buy anything from you(Just see all those thinsg on MSJ), they use the cracked version of your application was just because they can use it for free, so actually you lose nothing.
libbassmod.dylib is for the background music playback...
What? A keygen usually means someone reverse engineered your key verification algorithm to produce their own algorithm that satisfies yours. There is nothing you can do to stop this, except use PKI or some variant of a whitelist of keys. Even then, they can just patch your program. If you want to know what the keygen is doing, you need to dissassemble it with a dissassembler such as Ollydbg, IDA Pro, etc, it should be fairly simple as keygens are tiny programs, although it's probably a waste of time.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
forget the weird cases/companies, but in general, who, in your view, is the person who should be able to put his/her foot down and say "THIS is the layout. THIS is where the marketing message comes, THIS is where the price comes, THIS is where the testimonial comes"?? - the boss man, the template designer, users (split testing or something?)
I have never seen a never-ending series of stupid arguments and suggestions that lead up to a website that is a total disaster. That is what is happening at my work-place.
Technically, who should have the final say? I am very new to corporate world so I'd like to know how it is done.
Edit: when the client is paying, what they want goes in and what they don't want doesn't. Clear. What about when the website is built in-house? the top brass is acting as if the company is democratic and stuff when its actually not. So, going by their acclaimed democratic process, who should make the decision?
My company is product based and we develop our own website.
The question is WHO... not WHY. So please don't even begin to justify your answer or this question will be closed as argumentative or something. If 8 out of 10 replies say a particular person is responsible, there is no need for an argument there. If the replies are equally distributed, i'll take it that there is no ideal person who has the final say in the real world. But for god's sake please don't turn this into an argument! :D
It doesn't matter so much who it is that makes the decision, as long as there is someone.
What you are facing seems to be the situation where there is noone responsible for these decisions, so everyone is making decisions back and forth, and noone has the final say.
It's natural that the client should have the final say, however it's common that the client doesn't really know what they want or how to describe what they want. In that case someone else has to make the decisions on what should be presented to the client for approval.
Even if there is a democratic process during the development (which is usually a good way to progress), a company is not a democracy. In the end someone has to take the fruits of the process and decide what's good for the final product and what's not.
Ultimately it would be the business owner or the person elected to represent the business owners.
However, they would normally expect to be able to delegate the responsibility for such decisions to a single person further down the hierarchy. This person should have the authority to coordinate the required people and departments and make a decision. In an ideal world this person has the humility to realise that they aren't a web or UI designer and will allow the experts to advise them.
It sounds like the decision making hasn't been delegated to an individual but to a number of people (or the individual who has the authority isn't able or willing to use it). These seems to be relatively common.
Who's paying for it?
The Client! However its the job of the service provider to shape the clients ideas - However, there is always an odd client who has very firm ideas of what they want, in this case not alot you can do other than produce it.
Edit:
In the case of In-House - It works from the top-down then, the Owner -> MD -> Managers etc etc
However you would like to think that the top level managment would know that a designer is a designer and know how to design.
Edit 2: When I did work in such a place it was the job of the Analyst.
I would say that the final say on how a site should look (in terms of design, screen flow and usability) should come from the client.
However designers and developers should try to frame their ideas from a business sense. Remember that most (ok some) designers have spent a large amount of time at university studying elements of graphical design and know what colours work together and what gets people’s attention. Good developers will have some understanding on usability and we all know that usability is important. Whilst the customer should always have the last say we (as service providers) should always be willing to provide input (if warranted).
most programmers find it convenient to just do what their client or employer say. that's where code monkey term comes from I guess.
I could never work like that but I don't expect client to automatically trust me as well. Trust is something that has to be earned by showing confidence, diligence and good ethics. if client doesn't trust his supplier, relationship is doomed. that's why code monkeys can never deliver good results.
The end-user. If its client, then he should decide. Else if its internal website, then the actual user.
Also see the book by Joel about UI. I don't remember the name though.
Everyone has a client - even in-house.
The 'person' who gets the final say are the ones who will be eventually using it.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 4 years ago.
Improve this question
While project managers may each have their own personality and management style, it seems that many of them have a pernicious love of sneaking in "scope creep" when they can (whether anyone is watching or not). While they usually mean well (bless their hearts), what's the best way that you've found to say "NO" to project managers?
Let me start by saying that if a PM is "sneaking in scope creep" he is a very bad project manager.
Having said that...it's not your job to say no to a project manager. It's your job to ensure that he knows and understands the costs and risks of the change he is making. If the PM insists on changing the scope and adjusting nothing else in the project, get another job (because the project and/or company is doomed).
A good rule of thumb is to always answer, "Okay. What should we drop to get this in by the deadline?" and/or "Okay. If we move the deadline to X, we can add that in."
Every change affects completion time. There's no such thing as a zero-time task. Forcing a project manager to realize that quality, deadline, or feature list will suffer every time they make a change will go a long way towards getting them to think right about scope creep.
By having good costing and feature design for what is in scope, taking it back to them and asking if they want to move the date out, or cut other features. If the latter, what features are no longer important that haven't been started yet?
The easiest way to do it is be firm and tell them that it will affect the release date if you include the additional feature(s). Ultimately their job is to ship a product on time, so the bottom line for them is "can we fit this in without breaking the schedule". If the answer is no, then any project manager worth their salary should fall firmly on the side of development in agreeing it's unacceptable scope creep.
Be honest
Explain that there is a tight dependency between ship date, quality and features. Tell them that if they want to meet the ship date the quality will suffer if the new feature is added.
Chances are, while you suppose that your project manager has a 'pernicious love of sneaking in "scope creep" when they can', his perspective is probably different. It is probably more productive to make sure you understand his point of view.
This is of course in addition to communicating your own point of view, namely the consequences of the scope creep. You probably need to explicitly identify the additional work in your development plan, estimate how long the additional work will take, and explain that this means a delay or dropping some other feature.
This only works if your estimates are any good. This does not work if you do the additional work off the books, so that the additional time spent is not visible. Otherwise, you might meet the deadline for other reasons, such as harder work or efficiency gains, and your project manager will just remember that scope creep did not affect the delivery date 'last time'.
By pursuading him to understand how you are trying to help him save his job (i.e. you are telling him the truth.) He's got more at stake than you, I imagine.
If you want to succeed in your organization, you will want to be a team player and should strive to demonstrate your commitment. Sometimes, this means putting in some extra time to get a great new suggestion into the product.
However, you are more likely to command respect by placing firm limits on what can reasonably be expected of you. One way to do this is by helping managers to understand that they are not going to improve a product by engaging in scope-creep but that they are more likely to hurt the product in the long run.
Are the bits that get crept into the project being asked for by the client? Are they valuable items to deliver?
There is certainly an issue with the PM if they are sneaking things into the scope and not making them visible. This is a serious concern and something I would raise with them directly and openly.
However, scope creep (in my book) is perfectly acceptable if it continues to meet the requirements of the business. Sure, you have deadlines, but what's wrong with being flexible on what you deliver on that deadline? This is where visibility is critical.
Something that has worked well for me in the past:
I am taking it that if your project manager wants to sneak in features they do not have an accurate project plan. Keep your own task list with an estimate of how long each task will take, ordered by priority - it doesn't need to be elaborate just a text document or spreadsheet. If your project manager wants you to add a new feature, send a copy of your list and ask where you should insert it in the priority order.
If the project manager tries to negotiate down your time estimates then just say "I will do my best, but I can't guarantee anything."
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 4 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm building Desktop Software for over 10 years now, mostly it's simple Data-Input Software. My problem is, it's always looking the same: A Treeview on the Left and a lot of Text/Data Fields to the right, depending on the type of data currently is worked on. Are there any fresh ideas how such software nowadays should look like?
For further clarification:
It's very hierarchical data, mostly for electronic devices. There are elements of data which provide static settings for the device and there are parts which describe some sort of 'Program' for the device. There are a lot (more than 30) of different input masks. Of course i use combo boxes and Up/Down Entry Fields.
Having all of your software look the same thing is a good thing. One of the best ways to make it easy for people to use your software is to make it look exactly the same as other software your users already know how to use.
There are basically two common strategies for how to handle entry of a lot of data. The first is to have lots of data entry fields on one page. The next is to have only a few data entry fields but a lot of pages in a sort of wizard-style interface. Expert users find the latter much slower to use, as do users who are entering data over and over again. However, the wizard style interface is less confusing for newer users since it offers fewer elements at once and tends to provide more detail on them.
I do suggest replacing as many text fields as possible with auto-complete-based combo-boxes. This allows users to enter data exactly the same as with text-boxes, but also allows users to save typing by hitting the down key to scroll through choices after typing part of the data in.
Providing more detail on what data is being entered would probably yield more specific answers.
I'd also answer with a question, which is to ask what your motivation for considering a change is? Like the other posters, I'd agree that there is some value in consistency, but there's also a strong value in not ignoring niggles-in-the-back-of-the-mind feelings you have. Maybe you have a sense that your users aren't as productive as you'd like them to be, or you've heard feedback to that effect from your customers, or you're just looking to add some innovation for your own interest. Scratching itches is a good trait in a developer, in my view.
One thing I'd advocate would be a detailed user study. How much do you know about what your users do with the interfaces you create? Do you know the key tasks, the overall workflow? Would you know if one task regularly consumed 60% of your users' time, or if there was a task that was only performed once a month? Getting a good sense of what the users actually do (and not what they say they do) is a great place to start thinking about what changes might be worthwhile, especially if you can refactor the task to get a qualitatively different user experience.
A couple of specific alternative designs you might like to include in re-visioning the UI might be be facet browsing (works well for searching and exploring in hierarchies), or building a database of defaults / past responses so that text boxes can use predictive completion. However, I think my starting point would be the user study.
Ian
If it works...
Depending on what you've got happening with the data (that is, is it hierarchical, or fairly flat), you might want to try a tab-based metaphor, or perhaps the "Outlook-style", with a sidebar showing the sections of an application. One other notion I've played with lately is the "Object desktop" that I first saw proposed by Scott Ambler (Building Object Applications That Work). In this, you can display collections of items, or the user can "peel off" individual records for easy access.
Your information is not enough to really suggest you an interface alternative. However, may I answer your question with a question? Why do you think you have to change it? Has your customer complained? If not, it looks like your customer is happy with the way the software works right now, thus I wouldn't change it. If your customer complains about it, he'll most likely not just say "It's bad", he will say "Why can't it look like ..." and this will give you an idea how to change it.
I once had to re-design a very outdated goods management system. The old one was written for a now dead database system, still running in MS-DOS. The customer suggested I should create a prototype how this re-implementation might look like and then he'll decide if I get that job or not. I replaced the old, dead database with a modern MySQL database, I replaced the problematic shared peer access with a client server approach and I chose to rewrite the UI in Java, since different OSes were used and this had the smallest porting costs. So far the concept seemed good, the customer liked it. However, when he asked his employees what they think about it, they asked "So far it's great, but we have one question: Why doesn't it look like the old one?". Actually, it turned out that even with all the modern technologies, they wanted the interface to exactly look and being operated like the old one. So I had to re-build a 1986 usability nightmare MS-DOS UI in Java, because no other UI was accepted.
For me it is more about a clean, usable, logical design than anything else. If your program makes sense to the user, isn't clunky and works as advertised, then everything else UI related is essentially just like painting the house. I've sometimes rolled out a new version of a program with essentially the same controls that are skinned differently.
There's a reason that you've probably chosen the tree view - because it probably makes really good sense to do so. There are different containers and controls available in the various UI libraries, depending on the language, but I tend to stick with the familiar because the user probably gets how a tree control works and how a combobox works.
A user interface needs to be usable, just don't do the misstake to change to something working to something fancy-schmancy just because it looks better (been down that road)...
Make sure that added
widgets/controls really add a business value
Make sure that the added
widgets/controls do not mess up your
architecture (too much) and makes
the application harder to
manage/maintain
Try to keep platform standards on
how to do things (for example the Vista ux guidelines)
:)
//W