The closing thought on this otherwise dull article speaks well to problems we often face in the technical community:
"Such dreary developments, anticipated with certainty, must be borne philosophically."
This puts me in mind of one of the presentations I gave at the SharePoint Best Practices conference last month. I was describing how to get "great" business requirements and someone in the audience asked, in effect, what to do if circumstances are such that it’s impossible to get great requirements. For example, a given company’s culture places IT in front of the requirements gatherer / business analyst, preventing direct communication with end users. This is a serious impediment to obtaining great business requirements. My answer was "walk away." I’m not a big humorist, so I was surprised at how funny this was to the audience. However, I’m serious about this. If you can’t get good requirements, you can be certain that a dreary outcome will result. Who wants that? I’m a consultant, so it’s more realistic (although terribly painful and drastic) for me to walk away. However, if you’re entrenched in a company and don’t want to, or can’t, walk away, George (for once 🙂 ) shows the way.
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David Wright