Tuesday, February 28, 2006

First 1.5 Days

Well, yeah. New job, eh? Well, well.

Had a very brief induction yesterday morning, with the threat/promisle of more to come. Spent most of yesterday installing software, in a very specific order, and got done about 4pm. Spent the rest of the day, and this morning, looking at the workflow software they're using here.

So first - Installing things in a specific order.
WTF? Why, when I go to install Biztalk, can it not tell me that I need to install SQL Analysis server first? To be fair, Microsoft have go their shit together with some of their newer products, but when it's their own, freely downloadable components, it should install them for you. Like installing Sharepoint Portal Server (SPS) Service Pack 1. It tells you that you first need to upgrade Windows Sharepoint Services (WWS) to SP1, but, comeon, surely if it's checking for that, I could download/install that for you?
As for 3rd party components, a tool should tell you what it expects if it's not installed. If it needs to be installed before another component, then why can't it check for that component and then inform you to remove it before you continue?
Dependencies are a very complex thing, and when it's left to the customer to deal with that, what chance have they got? (Talking of which, their 'legacy' (which are their live) systems only compile on one machine. great).

Second then - Training Material.
Yes, I realise this is the course notes of a training course, but really. It's dull, poorly laid out, and alternative stupidly detailed, and then uselessly terse. I'm half way through, and I'm struggling to be bothered.

Oh well, soldier on. Perhaps soon I'll be let in on their project design... Have 0.5 of a clue, but I'm going to have to ask for more details on standards, procedures, etc etc.

Am a little concerned that the project plan doesn't quite work, and that there's a six week 'integraton testing' phase scheduled in at the end. Surely this should be a continuous thing?

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