MSF - antichamp virus

Bojan, still young, inexperienced and full of enthusiasm, happily took the bait and wrote the document in which he described his vision of improving firm's faulty business processes and coding standards. The entire document was impregnated by MSF and contained words like envisioning, planning, testing, quality assurance etc. Bojan's addiction to MSF and methodologies in general was emphasized by his suggestion that Dodoni should embrace MSF as a standard for doing projects and writing project documentation. He forwarded his document to all his co-workers and to big boss Erich.
Few days passed and nobody replied to his proposal, except Senka and Bartol. They both complimented Bojan for his initiative and said his ideas were the right direction the firm should follow. Only later he found out they were the original initiators of the workshop because they showed dissatisfaction with the way things were done in Dodoni and demanded some changes.
Zakro, who was the prime target of their intentions, didn't comment on Bojan's document. Later Bojan found out that after Zakro read his mail, he secretly took the MSF book that was left untouched on the shelf for months and started to read it. It was obvious he was preparing for the workshop.

The moment for the history: Champions were born!

Two weeks later workshop took place. Erich started his monologue with the following words: "Before we start, I'd like to clear things up. First of all, we must know the first rule of teamwork here - WE ARE ALL CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD." He meant to say that all employees are good programmers and so they should respect each other and there should be no egoism in the team. He probably read in some book that such phrase was good ice-breaker on team building meetings.

When Erich spitted his wisdom, Bojan caught a glimpse of Bartol looking towards Zakro and Stinky and trying to hide ironic smile on his face. Bojan didn't need much time to relate Bartol's giggling to all the bad practices he found in his new firm and for which he knew that mostly originated from those two geniuses. He suddenly became aware of how grotesque current situation was and how silly Erich's phrase in such context sounded . The questions started to pop up in his head:

• How can you call champions people who create such coding horror and who worship Visual Basic and monolithic architecture and at the same time despise planning, good design, modern architectures, testing and documentation?
• How can you call champion person like Zakro who claims to be an experienced program manager and at the same time avoids planning, performs poor requirement analysis, writes horribly illiterate documentation and doesn't care at all for coding standards and quality in general?
• Or maybe the real champ is Stinky, person who claims that classes are obsolete and that the structures are only good thing to do? "Experienced" developer who throws away COM components and packs all the code in one exe file?
• Perhaps the ultimate champion is Maddog, master of copy-paste method and guru of "It is faster that way" principle?

Although still enthusiastic and full of faith that people can change if you show them better ways how to do their job, Bojan started to feel a little uncomfortable.

Champion's point of view

His bad feeling was further provoked by behaviour of those three champions he thought about. They simply didn't understand what was wrong and why this workshop had to occur in the first place. They claimed that everything was under control and that firm had good and established business process with visible results. It was really amusing to listen to Zakro's passionate explanations how everything in Zagreb office was done systematically, according to detailed plans and under his good supervision. "How can you say we don't have documents? Everything we do is written in documentation. I can prove that.", he cried. Off course, that was a blatant lie because the documentation he mentioned was either missing or of such quality that nobody bothered to read it. Later Bojan found out that some of the documents Zakro used as a proof of his good work were in fact copied from the CD in MSF book. Day before workshop Zakro copied all of them into Dodoni documentation folders  and even translated some of them into his bad Croatian and signed himself as an author.

Zakro's right hand Stinky also tried with all his heart to diminish Bojan's efforts to change things in Dodoni computing. When Bojan suggested that company should embrace MSF as a process standard, Stinky replied: "Why do we need some strange and unfamiliar processes made by people outside of this firm? We are smart enough to invent our own business process!" He also wondered why this meeting should take place at all, because in his opinion the situation was great and there were no personal conflicts between personnel. He didn't know at the time how much Bartol and Senka despise him and his champion buddies.

Conclusion: "Everybody can be a project manager"

Workshop didn't fulfil the expectations of those who hoped that bad practices would be abandoned and company would sincerely make commitment to standards and quality. It was crystal clear that nothing would change. Neither Bartol and Senka nor Bojan had courage to point out directly to people who were the most responsible for present situation, namely Zakro and Stinky. Instead, the meeting ended with the usual political phrases like "OK, from now on we follow the good practices. Planning, object-oriented design, documentation are our new sacred cows. We promise that, scout's honour!"

Even worse consequence of the workshop was that Erich introduced a new system - each developer could be a project manager. Instead of forcing Zakro to start doing his job as a project manager properly, poor employees got additional burden on their back. Now they were expected to develop software and at the same time produce project plans, estimation and documentation. What a lovely gift from their beloved boss Erich! Really clever. It was a definite message to those who complained: "You want to play by the rules? You want project planning, documentation and standards? OK, no problem, but it is up to you. Be project managers, take greater responsibility, spend your time both programming and writing plans and documentation, exhaust yourself with doubled work and then you'll think twice before complaining or doubting in your good leadership."

The first person to become hybrid of project manager and developer was Stinky. The new version of DAMP, the leading Dodoni application was on the horizon and Stinky, as an unofficial head developer, was a logical choice for a main producer of that crap. He wasn't very happy with his new title because he realized it brought him an obligation to write documentation, one thing he always tried to avoid. After workshop, he complained to other employees that this new developer-manager system wasn't good thing at all and that they were all doomed to extra work.

Senka quits

Senka and Bartol weren't also satisfied with the new system and with the workshop in general. It was obvious that nothing would change and Zakro's and Stinky's way was still the only process in Dodoni computing. To make things worse, Senka was again assigned to work on the reports for DAMP, the boring and humiliating task she was hoping to get rid of and start to work on something more creative. It was obvious she had no chance for improving and getting more programming experience in this firm so she finally decided to pursue better opportunities somewhere else. Two weeks after the workshop she gave Zakro a letter of resignation. Nobody in the firm seemed to care, except for Bartol who lost the lunch break companion and massage client. His hands looked so sad realizing they wouldn't touch Senka's back any more.

As for Bojan, he was still living in a hope that he could change things and that he would finally be given an opportunity to prove that there are other ways how to write code, produce documents and manage projects. He was still full of optimism and good faith.