IT's Weasel Words Mon 25 Jun 07

Last Friday Jonathon Babcock had an interesting post called "You Know It's Getting Deep When .  ." talking about the weasel words we hear from developers in regard to our projects.  He was referencing a post from the previous day by Chris Woodill called "Developer Weasel Words".  Chris has a pretty good list of phrases we often here.  Fortunately, Chris didn't just stop with providing a list.  He also made some excellent recommendations on how to reduce the amount of excuse making.

The one set that Chris had that has always been a pet peeve of mine (it also made Jonathon's favorite list) is:

It Worked on my Machine!: programmers use this excuse to downplay a bug. The reality is actually the opposite - it means that you have an intermittent bug which is by far the worst kind of bug to have in your application. You want bugs to fail quickly and consistently - any variant such as "That's Weird", "That didn't happen yesterday", "That must be a data problem", etc. is admitting you have a bug that cannot be easily duplicated.

This is such a classic that it's gone beyond just the developers.  For example, calling the HelpDesk and reporting problems accessing the Internet or starting a package program and a getting a "It works okay on my machine" just sends me through the roof.  I guess the problems are all in my head.

I do have an additional one I'd like to add to the list:

"No problem, it will take about X hours of effort" These weaselliness (is there such a a word) of this usually becomes apparent with a few questions:

Q. When will it be complete?

A. No problem, it will take about 80 hours of effort

Q. So, it will be ready in 2 weeks?

A. If, I can work full time on it.

Q. OK, so when will it be complete?

A. It depends.

I think you can see where this is going and it's no where good.  No wonder people get frustrated with IT.  However, to be fair we can't blame this all on the developers.  As Chris points out we have to develop a culture of open and honest communication.  Forcing them to give you the answer you want to hear isn't going to make it happen.

Got any other examples of "weasel words" ?

"Short-tailed weasel, Port Angeles Harbor" photo by chuqui

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear
• Let's Just Say What We Mean!
• Say What?
• Or the posts in the "Communications" category