feature creep at the unpaid gig

[sistawendy]

As I've done four or five times by now, I spent from 9 to 11 last night talking with the director & IT guy at Lambert House. I'd worked pretty hard over the last couple of weeks on all the features they'd previously asked for, and I was pretty proud of the results that I'd been able to forcibly extract from MS Access. I'd written up a nice little deployment doc, and I was ready to bring it to the customers, i.e. the other volunteers. But neau.

See, the scenario for most of these changes is keeping people who've been banned or suspended out of the house. The DB at present isn't nearly as helpful as it could be about who's been naughty and who's been nice, even though the data is there (all over the schema). We're all agreed that the UI needs to be a bit bossy - but not inflexible - and as idiot-proof as we can make it, because we can't rely on the volunteers' being trained and able to cope with anything else. How to do that was the subject of most of last night's meeting.

Plus, the volunteers that work the "floor" have found out about this project, and some of them have some (admittedly very sensible) suggestions. Basically, they want to go paperless.

The director, Ken, asked me whether I'd rather do one big deployment or several little ones. I said the latter because a) it'll be better for my morale and that of the floor volunteers, and b) there's the bus effect: if I get hit by a bus after the first small deployment, they still get something. There's also the benefit of testing by volunteers for future releases.

Ken was also chagrined to learn that Access isn't really a client-server product, with all of the negative security implications that entails. Maybe I'll be rewriting this thing in SQL with a web front end after all.

Comments

[staxxy.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll be rewriting this thing in SQL with a web front end after all.

you keep saying this. over and over. I think you should just do it. It is very clear that you really really want to.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I do. And it wouldn't look bad on a resume, either. But dear Bob, that's a lot of time to get the UI right.

[staxxy.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it, but that sounds like something you should be poking at when you are not there. maybe talk to the IT guy about doing it simultaneously with the Access stuff. Yes, it means the Access stuff will be that much *slower* but it also means that they will get a vastly improved interface that much sooner. And you will certainly be a lot happier.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I'm already doing the Access stuff at home. And I've got my zillion other projects, including Project Girlfriend and my little biology experiment.

[staxxy.livejournal.com]

I figured you were. I am suggesting you divide the time you are already spending on the Access stuff in half - and spend part of that time doing this instead. Or maybe consider doing that once you get a more reasonably functional Access one rolled out.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I think after the first Access release, which is going to entail a buttload of schema additions, would be a good time to do the SQL thing. There's no sense in doing them twice.

[darkmane.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my life circa 1996.

I ended up with over 100 mdb files because the company I worked for wouldn't pay for SQL and performance was unacceptably slow with one mdb file.

Hm!

[grace-batmonkey.livejournal.com]

Interesting project! What's really interesting to me about it, weirdly enough, is that my current gig is in support of a thing that does precisely what you describe (yes, even though the text there doesn't mention Case Management, a huge number of customers use it that way). And I can be that extra little bird confirming your strong pull to SQL is something you shouldn't ignore ;] Noted that you already have a lot on your plate, though. Difficult divide to cross, but I know you'll get them as close as you can, and it'll be awesome.

AND! I was just reading questions over on AskMetaFilter (as one does) and saw this one and though of you immediately as someone who might know the answer, but no idea if a) that's true, b) you've the time to answer, c) how to facilitate getting an answer from a non-member to the Asker. If a) is true and b) is workable, do you have ideas for how c) can be accomplished? ETA: nm on c)! she included a throwaway email account in a comment :D

Re: Hm!

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

As for your MeFi question, she's looking for info specific to NYC, for which I'm not useful all by myself. I went to tsroadmap.com, though and found regional listings of trans organizations (http://www.gender.org/resources/index.html).

Re: Hm!

[grace-batmonkey.livejournal.com]

I did a terrible job of pointing out the part I thought you could give advice on, and that was the self-medicating part. I waited this long to clarify because that seemed an awkward thing to be blatant about.