Frog Management Explained
A number of years ago I was sitting on my front porch enjoying an early summer evening when I noticed a frog sitting in my driveway enjoying a light shower from the spray of the sprinklers watering my lawn. My wife was due home from work soon and it occurred to me that the frog might very well get squashed unless I encouraged him to move to a safer location.
Rising from my comfortable porch chair, I sauntered over to the frog and gently bumped his butt with my toe - not hard; just with what I thought was enough energy to have him scamper off the driveway and into a safer space. And the frog indeed hopped away from my toe - by two or three jumps - but he remained well in the comfort - and danger - zone of the wet driveway. Again I gently bumped his butt. And again he hopped a few times yet remained in danger. It ended up taking me five or six gentle nudges to finally get that frog out of the driveway and safely into a flower bed.
A few days later I had an encounter with a developer assigned to the same client project as me. I'll call him "Fred". Fred was working on a custom program for a client representative I'll call "Susan". The exchange went something like this:
Me: "Fred, I just spoke with Susan. She tells me the the program you just delivered to her fails with a DM3:0088-666 error as soon as she opens it. Did you test this program before you delivered it?"
Fred: "Yes, the program compiled."
Me: "I understand that the program compiled. But did you perform some level of smoke testing to ensure it performs in the manner Susan expects it to in order to meet her requirements?"
Fred: "Well, no. All I did was compile the program".
Me: "OK. Understood. Susan has recorded the test of this program as FAILED. Please check it out and fix the problem."
A day or two later, I went back to Fred and we had the following conversation:
Me: "Fred, I just spoke with Susan. She tells me the the program you just delivered to her failed again; this time with a DM5:0088-886 error. Did you test this program before you delivered it?"
Fred: "Yes, the program compiled."
And then I remembered that frog...
Thank you...excellent reminder reminder, that sometimes I'm the toe, and sometimes........ribbbit
Myrl, she always looks at you with a strange and questioning gaze....
I just went through your entire frog story and your explanation about your consulting gig with my wife. She looked at me with a strange and questioning gaze. I then started to explain the similarities between your frog needing multiple attempts to do something safer and asking basically the same thing with Fred. My wife loves frogs, so maybe she thinks like them. I thought it was simple and easy to understand. You did a clever story and I enjoyed it. Thanks!