06 October, 2005

Death Spiral Retrospective: undefined

PMv1 has returned to take over Death Spiral following the departure of Sluggo, and is having a meeting with me and my minion. To try and cut corners (or as he prefers to think of it, get Death Spiral back to his original vision and still meet an arbitrary deadline he's come up with) he's hit upon a solution that's been available from the start but has consistently been left alone by everyone (himself included) because the results would tell us nothing about what we really need to know, would probably panic management into going for a needlessly expensive and unnecessary quick-fix solution, and would only lead to us having to do everything over again properly if (when!) Death Spiral finally gets the software it needs to proceed.

"Moreover," we point out, foolishly expecting this to be the clincher, "the results wouldn't even be accurate."

"Define 'accurate'."

Oh. That's not good. "Useful. Not wrong. Something on which we could base informed decisions and make valid recommendations."

"Define 'valid'."

Things deteriorate from there, but by the end of the meeting it seems that the official Project Death Spiral line is that project staff asking for accuracy just aren't seeing the big picture, and what would the people who need to use the Death Spiral on an ongoing basis know anyway?

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