Chan's Personal Blog

The last month, I've been working on a project that has been on the shelves for a long time, and we've finally got time to do it. It's a project first proposed two years ago by some consultants that came to our department.

This project affects a lot of users, and it's quite a departure from what we currently have. It's considered a high-risk project. To help lower risk, software engineering dictates that you consult with your users to better understand their needs and concerns. One of the ways we do this is by showing a prototype to users, and asking them for input and feedback.

So, one of my co-workers puts together a prototype for demonstration purposes. We send out an e-mail asking if anyone's interested in seeing the prototype and providing some input. Usually, users appreciate this sort of thing because it's a way for them to voice their opinions, and we can make changes based on those opinions.

About six people volunteered to look at the prototype, and a liason met with each of the volunteers to show them the prototype. For some reason, two of the people that attended these session were really angry, not at the prototype, but at the process. They were angry that we were "wasting" their time asking for opinions again when consultants had already nailed down the requirements for the project two years ago. They ranted on and on about how all those consultations two years ago were wasted, and why we were even looking for feedback. Lets just say our liason was royally angry. I would be too.

A few things about this ticked me off. First, these consultation sessions were completely voluntary. If you didn't want to be there, you didn't have to. Yet, people took time out of their busy schedules to attend one of those sessions just to yell at people. The real question is, why are you wasting our time? Secondly, the requirements and prototypes that the consultants gave us two years ago were garbage. They were not technically feasible and they were very unrealistic. On top of that, almost half of the staff in our department are relatively new, and they weren't even here during those consultations two years ago. So, this was a chance to hear from those voices as well. Lastly, two years is a long time in the high-tech world. Technologies change rapidly. What was possible two years ago is completely different from what's possible today. So, we wanted to show off some of those new technologies.

Anyways, it's just annoying when people just defecate all over a goodwill gesture like this. We could have been insensitive and just implemented the whole project without consulting anyone, but we chose to ask people for input.

Some people need to adopt a less hostile attitude at work.

A few weeks back, I was contacted by an individual from Camosun College asking about Mamook which is the software system that I work on (it's an online recruitment program). He was having troubles getting it installed, so I walked him through a few things. The guy was trying to use the software to track students coming out of high school and into the skilled trades. The software is ideal for this sort of situation because employers can post jobs on a website, and students can apply to them electronically. The guy was wondering if it could do these sort of things, and I offered to give him a demonstration of the software.

So, two weeks ago, I gave the guy a demo and he was quite excited about the whole thing. He then asked if I could give a demonstration at Camsoun College. He wanted me to show high school students what this software was like.

I thought to myself, should be easy giving a presentation to a few high school kids. No pressure. So, I accepted the invitation. Four days before the presentation, I talk to the guy again, and it turns out that the audience has changed. Instead of high school students, it would be high school principals, high school counselors, representatives from construction associations, the school district superintendent, and more. This kind of changes things. Suddenly this is becoming a big deal. Suddenly, I had to dress up for a presentation! Oh noes!

Dealing with Camosun was kind of annoying because things kept changing. One of the most important things about giving a presentation is knowing who your audience is. A room full of high school kids is very different from a room full of important representatives from business groups and school districts. On top of that, the presentation time kept changing.

Anyway, Monday came, and I went down to Camosun College's Interurban campus. I've never been there before so I went extra early just to give me time to find the building. Luckily, when I got on the bus, I saw one of my friends on the bus, and he happened to be a Camosun College student. Score.

So, the presentation involved a 10 minute introduction about who I am, a little history about our software, and some key features. Then, I gave a 30 minute live demonstration of the software, and left about 20 minutes for questions.

The talk overall went very well, there were a few glitches with the live demo because I was using an old copy of our software, but I recovered gracefully from it. After I finished, everyone was asking a ton of questions which is a good sign. The 20 minute question and answer period turned into an hour very quickly.

One of the key selling points about our software is that it's absolutely free. A lot of people there were complaining that the software they were looking at getting cost thousands of dollars a year to run, and why the heck wasn't this software that I was presenting part of the evaluated software in the first place. Some people were even offering me money to have me go to their school to see if our software would work there.

It was also interesting hearing how people were dealing with matching high school students and employers in job shadow programs and work experience programs. Apparently the school districts have no software to deal with this. The province is developing some software for this, but it is late, overbudget, and it won't be delivered any time soon. So, a lot of people deal with this using good old fashion pen and paper, and it's an absolute nightmare to manage if you have hundreds of students and employers.

Anyway, most people were very impressed with the software. There's a possibility that every school in the Greater Victoria school district might use our software in the long-run. It'd be quite satisfying because it's nice to see software that you write benefiting so many people. That's is why I got into the field of computer science, to write software that's useful to people.

(Club Mo is an unofficial alias for Camosun College. My friends that attended that school said that everything was so easy and laid back, so it was like hanging out at a resort or something.)