I outsourced some work to China – some programming for a workflow designer. I got the work back today, and whilst the work looked good for what it implemented, it did not fit my spec or what I wanted. Rather than a Windows GUI, it was a Web GUI, and rather than a graphical designer, it was a text/tables based one. I feel horrible now because I can see that the coder has put the work in, but has just mis-interpretted my specification, and did not ask the right questions.

And this leaves me out of pocket, or him out of pocket – and neither of these is really a good situation. I guess I am too concerned about other people. It would be nice to say ‘Here is another $x… go away and do it again’. But the reality is that I am running a business, and that this person has used time to deliver something that is not usable by me.

I have emailed him to let him know, and I will see what he comes back with.. .

I heard a story about a software engineering talk a while back. The lecturer was talking about the risks associated with computers. The talk was on the quality of software, and how to plan the process so that there are no critical bugs. He asked the audience which was mostly made up of university lecturers and professors in computer science some questions. The first question was quite simple…

How many of you would have concerns about getting into a plane for a journey if your students had written the software for it?

The speaker was somewhat put off by the response… Almost everyone in the entire lecture hall put up their hand! This was NOT good. Sensing that there was a major problem, he decided to ask the question in a different way. Try to find a way to make this a positive… Who was teaching well? This time the question was…

How many of you would not have a problem boarding a plane in which your students had worked on?

The result surprised the speaker somewhat… Only one hand went up. Out of this one room there was a lecturer who was confident about the processes that he was teaching his students that he would get into a plane if they had done the software. So the speaker did the only thing he could – he invited the sole lecturer onto the stage to ask about why he was so confident in getting into the plane. The answer was not what was expected – he thought it would be things like software testing, and data flow diagrams, and testing. But the response was somewhat different.

He responded that he was very compenent about the ability of his students. He knows their strengths and weaknesses. And he knew that if they had designed the software for the plane that he need not be concerned about it going haywire in the air.

He was confident that the software would not even allow the plane to leave the gate!