My boss wants me to reinvent the wheel...

SeñorAmor

I work for a small company and have two bosses. One actually runs the company and deals with all the day-to-day stuff, and another is just kinda around to provide input when needed. The former is a horrible procrastinator and a complete tech moron (which is why I'm around), and the latter, while mildly tech-knowledgeable, has a tendency to over-simplify the degree of difficulty my job entails.

My bosses want a project management system a la Basecamp. They are looking for 3 main features: project scheduling, accounting, and inventory management, and 1 minor feature: project estimation. I can confirm that Basecamp has scheduling and accounting, and I think it has inventory management, but I'm not 100% on that.

My 2nd boss seems to think I can replicate all of Basecamp, from scratch, in under 2 weeks. To quote: "It's really a simple system, what I want. It's nothing more than some relational databases and a front-end gui to make it all work."

I'm a one-man team. In addition to my webmaster duties, I maintain our company network, go on installs with our installers, and pretty much make sure everything else works here. Even without all that, there is no possible way anyone could replicate a project system like Basecamp in under 2 weeks.

I am hoping that I can get my bosses to see the light and use an existing tool, but if I cannot, how on earth can I get them to realize 2 weeks is simply not enough time for one person to create a brand new project management system?

I love my job, but most times I cannot stand my bosses.

Monolithic_Dome

Ben Pollack wrote a really good article that you might find to be of use, either to have your boss read, or to summarize it's basic argument. It's talking about the idea of cloning Stack Overflow, but his argument applies equally well to Basecamp or what-have-you.


Here's a tasty bit:

Developers think cloning a site like StackOverflow is easy for the same reason that open-source software remains such a horrible pain in the ass to use. When you put a developer in front of StackOverflow, they don’t really see StackOverflow. What they actually see is this:

create table QUESTION (ID identity primary key,
TITLE varchar(255), -- why do I know you thought 255?
BODY text,
UPVOTES integer not null default 0,
DOWNVOTES integer not null default 0,
USER integer references USER(ID));
create table RESPONSE (ID identity primary key,
BODY text,
UPVOTES integer not null default 0,
DOWNVOTES integer not null default 0,
QUESTION integer references QUESTION(ID))
If you then tell a developer to replicate StackOverflow, what goes into his head are the above two SQL tables and enough HTML to display them without formatting, and that really is completely doable in a weekend. The smarter ones will realize that they need to implement login and logout, and comments, and that the votes need to be tied to a user, but that’s still totally doable in a weekend; it’s just a couple more tables in a SQL back-end, and the HTML to show their contents. Use a framework like Django, and you even get basic users and comments for free.

But that’s not what StackOverflow is about. Regardless of what your feelings may be on StackOverflow in general, most visitors seem to agree that the user experience is smooth, from start to finish. They feel that they’re interacting with a polished product. Even if I didn’t know better, I would guess that very little of what actually makes StackOverflow a continuing success has to do with the database schema—and having had a chance to read through StackOverflow’s source code, I know how little really does. There is a tremendous amount of spit and polish that goes into making a major website highly usable. A developer, asked how hard something will be to clone, simply does not think about the polish, because the polish is incidental to the implementation.

TheDragon

Take an hour or two and break it down into work items, then cost how much each would take to implement. Keep in mind you get about 20% buffer time for email, random issues, etc. Show your boss it takes way over 2 weeks and he can't argue with that.

Deebaser

Get the specs. Set up a meeting and whiteboard them to death.

If they do not understand how much work is involved with their request it is your job to let them know. Projects are so much easier to do when you don't have to do them yourself.

Sipex

And christ, if you end up making this thing HAVE THEM SIGN OFF ON WHAT THEY WANT FIRST. And make it clear that this is what they get.

Your bosses sound like they'd periodically pipe in things like "Well, that screen is nice but I always thought it might look better like this...or this...orrrrr this" or "Oh, could you also add in these 50 other features for us?"

Jake!

TheDragon wrote: »

Take an hour or two and break it down into work items, then cost how much each would take to implement. Keep in mind you get about 20% buffer time for email, random issues, etc. Show your boss it takes way over 2 weeks and he can't argue with that.

This.

Additionally, cost using basecamp for 12 months and five years. Also, get a quote, if you can find someone who doesn't laugh you off the phone, as backup. It might seem like a pain in the arse, but if they don't understand the issues, then its up to you to explain it to them in a way they do understand.

I believe there are open source basecamp-style solutions, by the way.

SeñorAmor

Cost isn't an issue. I pitched Basecamp and its pricing and my boss didn't flinch. It's that my boss doesn't think Basecamp will do what he wants. So, first, I need to show him that it WILL do what he wants (hopefully). Yay for 30 day trials where I can force it down his throat and make him use it.

Boo for my boss not being open-minded and I'm sure he'll go in with a predefined opinion and blast it down before it has a chance to shine.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're not going to go with Basecamp. I did some research on it this weekend and it doesn't do what we need it to do," he told me this morning.

"What exactly do you need it to do?" I asked.

"Accounting, scheduling, and inventory. Oh, and we want to be able to do job estimations too."

"Ok, well it already does scheduling, and it looks like it has plugins for accounting, which usually includes inventory," I countered.

At least -- at this point anyway -- he's open to me demoing it and seeing if it does what he wants. My biggest fear is that it doesn't do exactly what he wants, exactly how he wants it and he makes me start from scratch and gives me an unreasonable deadline.

How exactly do I explain to my boss that web design isn't usually stuff that can be done in a couple days? He pulls this shit on me all the time, and it's always the same thing, "It's just a couple relational database tables." Explaining it to him, unfortunately, makes it sound really easy. How do you explain web design in a way that implies difficulty? I'm struggling with that aspect.

Aldo

SeñorAmor wrote: »

How exactly do I explain to my boss that web design isn't usually stuff that can be done in a couple days? He pulls this shit on me all the time, and it's always the same thing, "It's just a couple relational database tables." Explaining it to him, unfortunately, makes it sound really easy. How do you explain web design in a way that implies difficulty? I'm struggling with that aspect.

So how did these previous impossible jobs go? Can you remind him of the last time he asked something unreasonable and how that did not work?

Did you tell them what you're telling us? That it's impossible to pull off? If you're the only guy with knowledge about these things they should listen to you, because they know jack-all about it. If they still say you should do it then you should go do some preventive ass-saving. Ask them what other tasks you can ignore for these two weeks, that you can make no guarantees that the product will be ready in two weeks and that your other work and ultimately their revenue will suffer as a result.

I mean, this is assuming they simply refuse to listen to your opinion as an expert.