When demoing new software to the company CEO, new and severe bugs will suddenly appear forcing the presenter to spend twenty minutes saying, “It didn’t do this during testing.”
This will be followed by a ten minute lecture from the CEO on the importance of quality in engineering.
More wisdom next week,
Andrew
Andrew's View of the Week 
it occurs most of the times we demonstrate the product, the thing is only how do you manage those 10 minutes in explanation of why those bugs are appearing 😛
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Ouch. And in his lecture, the CEO will fail to mention the arbitrary deadline that he assigned for the software demo despite the developers’ requests for additional QA time.
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QA time? never on a prototype, we’re lucky to have time ourselves to test it.
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The most entertaining product launch I attended was at IBM here in Melbourne. We the customers were waiting to drool over the new toy that was to be released and nothing happened. For half an hour we watched a lot of blokes crawl about the floor, bums in the air, cabling everywhere, wondering what went wrong. It was nice to see someone else doing what we usually did.
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I’ve been on both sides of that problem, but it’s more fun as the customer than as the seller.
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Yes you don’t get egg on your face.
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But then, the CEO missed the memo that requested the necessary hardware to test the software on, prior to the customer demo.
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which is normally coupled with marketing telling you that the customer wanted an on-site demo last week.
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I think I’ll pass on the opportunity to be a software presenter! I avoid situations that lead to a lecture!
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Yes, I try to avoid those too.
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Sigh …
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Oops…
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“Honest, it was working this morning in the lab.”
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Oh I believe you, hundreds, especially CEO’s wouldn’t…😉
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Ugh. Sounds awful.
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It is – I try to avoid CEO demos.
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I can imagine.
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Good point, Andrew. I have found that success happens in private and failure happens in front of everyone.
Happy Weekend,
Ω
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Exactly – fastest way to break something is to try and show how well it works.
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And so goes your 1/2 hour meeting, eh? 😉
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yes, and for foolish engineers who schedule hour long meetings, it can get quite painful.
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The CEO’s comments are about as reassuring as most of his other reassurances…
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Most engineers are able to tune out the CEO, so most of us have no any idea what they are saying.
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I’m nodding along with you though for me, it’s online, as my virtual hangout goes silent or dark. Sigh.
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Yup, that happens too.
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