knickknackz

The closer we get to ship day, the higher the tensions rise between developers, testers, and program managers (PMs). Apparently our developer philosophy is a little looser with respect to how dangerous last minute changes can be.

I’m sure our customers would understand that we intended for them to have a wonderful experience.

I heard of this approach from two individuals who worked at (different branches of) a retailer who’s logo resembles a target - if a customer asks about something and you don’t know how to answer, disappear for awhile and then give them an answer that doesn’t require you to produce anything.  I’d like to note that this was not company policy, these guys just found it to be the least confrontational way to handle the situation.

Sometimes you’re reminded why certain people aren’t suited to be the face we present to the customer. 

I was one of the 2 girls playing soccer in our team Soccer “Olympic” game.  For a little while I guarded the guy that the other girl usually guards. I think they have a little bit of a friendly rivalry going.

It’s Twilight.

And she starts the story with, “[We] used to play this game when it was about this light out.”

And it’s not that this guy is insensitive or doesn’t care about the product. It’s that he doesn’t want to change things close to a release date (and introduce regressions) and he doesn’t want to encourage “feature creep” (continually adding new functionality - think, ‘oh yeah, we should do that, too!’).  It just seems callous when you only see the surface speak.

Sometimes I’m amazed at how little original dialogue I add to these strips.