Without TK: how do developers get involved in this

The results of the survey from the previous article shocked me. After all, when developers take on a project without TK, one fledgling analyst and 10 small kittens die. Why are you so? How is that?





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Why it happens? What can be done? Here are some versions:

Version 1: I'm afraid of losing a client

Everyone knows this primal fear! He got us in the genome from cave programmers! If I miss this client, then I will have nothing to eat !!! Pull yourself together, chairman!



While Mr. Without TK is eating your brain, during this time you can manage to find more sane customers, and earn much more.



The loss of a client only stimulates the search for new ones more actively. The illusion that the next customer will have to be searched for a very, very long time will disappear when you concentrate on optimizing the search process, the technology of identifying the most profitable customers from the entire muddy stream. The more active you are, the more you know, the more you turn to yourself.



I have often had such a situation that a customer, with whom we did not agree, recommended to my friends. That is, he left annoyed, and then bam! recommends me to my acquaintances, partners, mistress ... True, according to such recommendations often comes to me too ...



It is necessary to understand that each customer is a bit masochist, they love when they are asked to, they are refused. In relations with the customer must be present subtle BDSM. If you behave in the spirit of “what does a gentleman deign?”, Then suspicions arise, are you a manager?

Version 2: for friends

Sometimes it seems that the development of the project with friends will be held as a country holiday with a sea of ​​positive, vodka and kebabs. The fog disperses after the first round of edits, when it turns out that everything is not right and everything is wrong, and it is not clear how life has brought you together with this tactless cattle. How could you be friends for so many years?



If you want to do a project with your friends, then do them a favor in drawing up a detailed statement of work, take care of those who are dear to you. In this case, you need to understand that you are likely to quarrel at the stage of writing the TK, and even earlier.



Here, you have an entertaining story of one “friendship” project. My close friend needed to launch an online store urgently and inexpensively, because the investor gave the go-ahead, and the container was already floating from China. I immediately warned that this is not really my topic, since I mainly work with corporate e-learning products and medical systems, but we will think of something. So, investor money stood out, and a friend showed up in my field of vision with a cheerful: “Well, come on a portfolio of online stores! We choose a contractor! Just send it quickly, don't delay! ”I slightly falomorphed about how quickly“ Save-help, friend dear! ”Transformed into:“ I came to you with a rare opportunity to participate in my tender! ”And merged the chalice with the phrase:“ Y I’m ordering for several millions here - sorry, now there’s no time to collect shopping portfolios ”. A friend was offended, but informed me that I was “still on the shortlist”. On that and decided.

Version 3: for yourself

It seems that you really know what you want. Inside the team, everyone should be on the same wavelength, this is the team spirit! Therefore, the best way to embroil even the most cohesive team is to work without TK on an internal project. Here each participant gets a unique opportunity to express themselves at their best. What a space for personal criticism: “I didn’t know before that I was working with such finished hands!”



And how many edits can be made! When the logo in the cap changes its size by 2 pixels for the 18th time, because “it still looks somehow unprofessional”, you start to feel that something has gone wrong. But leave no doubt! You are not for any client, but for yourself! So do not be afraid again 50 change the concept - it will definitely help the business! That is why internal projects of quite successful IT companies are often delayed for centuries.

Version 4: novice developer tackle any hell

The easiest way to seduce young, tender developers who fervently crave a portfolio with large high-profile projects that opens any doors. But, as is known, without TZ it turns out HZ. That is why it is a shame to show all this to anyone, unless of course they succeed in holding this horror to the end. “Here, we did here ... And we almost completed it! It does not work, but, in general, the essence is visible. ”



If you are a novice developer, do not hesitate to demand a TK - this will help you to distinguish normal customers from astronauts who will make you hate the profession, yourself and the whole world.

Experienced gentlemen-developers will confirm that it is better to develop a portfolio and experience in a team of real professionals, both from customers and performers.



Often a portfolio is collected according to the principle: “Man, did you collect anything at Drupal this year? Let me write it off! ”Clients are such entertainers, and often they are not satisfied with“ just a portfolio ”. I was somehow asked for a CRM portfolio for shopping and entertainment centers in order to confirm my competence in this area.

Version 5: Important Client

Here it is not accepted. We never work with anyone like that anywhere. Remember the experiment, when all the monkeys in a cage were watered with ice water, if one of them attempted to eat bananas at the top of the stairs? The violator was hurt, and no one climbed behind the bananas. Then a new girl was placed in a cage, she climbed behind the bananas - she immediately received lyuley, and then herself mutated another new one. Scientists replaced all the monkeys in a cage, one by one, and gradually only the primates remained, who had never seen the ice shower, but continued to beat the new bananas.



I'm talking about what? Such large monkeys work in large companies: “In our company, it is customary to pay for the final result with a delay of payment of 60 days!”.



Well, then it remains only to question the developers, get the middle-ceiling rating of “this”, multiply it by 3 ... no, better by 5, and feel free to enter the KP. They will buy it — well, they will not buy it — and thank God, because they will, like the X10, fight the entire vertical of power from the junior trainee to the general.



Of course, there may be “your good boy” who will do everything twice as fast and cheaper. We must meet such a boy with a positive, promise to help with advice, if that! And towards the end of the (supposed) project, call and ask: “How are you?”.



In fact, large companies are not afraid of large sums, especially if you can justify them. If you left for their budget, they will try to persuade you to get a discount. And here you can get out of the whole get-together, which, as a rule, collapses into a meeting, more or less sane person and try to explain to him that there is such a tricky way with TK, a preliminary description of the content, screens and scenarios that can magically reduce the amount it is only necessary to arrange and carry out this work somehow ... Somehow, separately and in advance ... At the expense of another budget. Well, they know better there.

Version 6: unqualified customers

Suppose something unclear is coming to you with big ears that consider that software is found in cabbage, just like children.



Well, well, do liquidation of illiteracy. Educate the client. Next time he will not contact those who do not offer TK at the entrance. Well, if you contact, take a spoonful, then it will come back to you anyway.

Version 7: Payroll Programmer

A good salary and code - this is the second most popular dream of a programmer after paying by the hour. 250K, social package and straight to heaven! And life is good! What a beautiful life! Not really. Even such conditions can be turned into hell.



So, the PR star aka PR-manager comes to the developers and informs that she urgently needs to raise a little little site with registration, mini-games, scoring points for activities and a shop of prizes. The payroll developer kindly informs her that she should download the standard TK form (containing, for example, fields such as “required user data security level” and “expected peak load on the server”) from GitHub, fill it in and back it up. Detailed instructions on how and what, she can easily find on the corporate wiki. A PR star goes off like a cat, but, unlike an autist programmer, she’s a PR star who knows how to communicate with the right people, so the head of the development department flies over the top, he pulls out the handcuffs and straps the programmer to the battery for a day- two, until he launches a little and very urgent promo-site. And the PR star is already content to run to him with a design that was made by a brilliant maestro from the display advertising department and who can be pulled only on ... Well, you understand.



A programmer-on-salary that has gone gray in the morning is launching a promo-site, which includes partner giga traffic, which buries both promo-site and some other important external and internal services. The head of the development department again pulls out the handcuffs.

Version 8: too lazy, there is no one to do TK

“I’m a developer, and I don’t want to write TK, I want an algorithm and save-peist!” But why not ask the client to solve this problem? The analyst may well be on the client side and give something quite sane.



If the analyst has neither the client nor you, well, then hire him and bill the client!

Version 9: the customer does not know how it should be

What could be better than an unqualified customer? Once I wrote a technical assignment for a student. Well, that is the customer was a schoolboy, probably a very rich schoolboy. It was the most difficult project for me, because I had to invent a lot myself - the young man simply didn’t have any opinion on many issues.



It happens that the customer says so: “I don’t know what I want - offer options!” And I really want to start making these options, but you have to pull yourself together and draw up the terms of reference for the options (yes, the options should also be made according to the terms of reference ).

Version 10: For future cool projects

When I finished this article with my excellent editor, a friend came to us and told me that he was doing without TK for the sake of future projects:



- Now I will take a penny without TZ, but then they will buy a mega-project from me at a normal price!

- But why?!

- I believe in it! And this project is really interesting to me!

- But why will they buy?

- Aaaa, I do not know! Well, okay, you have shamed me! I won't do that anymore!

Version 11: “I want your eyes to burn!”

There are such customers-tempters, show-men, orators from God, who manage to ignite a sickly interest in the project, even with the most hardened developer with ashes in his eyes. I often hear just such a phrase: “I want your eyes to burn!” - and it immediately makes me alert. Often, such customers accompany their speeches with generous promises of a stake in a project or the role of an exclusive operator of a super-successful product or service. In general, the developer starts to believe what the project does for himself, and then why such formalities as TK?



I immensely respect people with burning eyes, but please leave some of your dry fuel on the TZ!

Conclusion

For all my activities, the rejection of TK has never helped simplify a project or make money. The problem is that in IT projects TK has not yet become the same mandatory part of the training. Like, say, in construction, where without a project it is not recommended to build even a village outhouse.



Developers, well, please make TK an industry standard and teach customers that there is no other way.



PS: Do not forget to write in the comments why and how you took it without TK, who bent you about it, what tricks and tricks you used.

UPD:

Here the user has formulated important fundamental questions on the topic “What is TK? What is the analyst doing? ”, Thanks to him! habrahabr.ru/post/315624/#comment_9952198

Thanks to all the commentators, thanks to them the discussion turned out much more interesting than the article itself.