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Procrastinating Cancer
It is said that more than 75% of IT professionals are supposed to have been affected by Procrastinating Cancer. Its effects are at peak during fridays and sometime after post lunch daily. Often ends up in unbalanced workload, almost missing deadlines in delivering. Usually seen with bright people who are capable of doing a task less than the given time, making them to procrastinate it till the deadline is almost close.
Symptoms and effects:
Lack of progress in career.
Drop in interest in work .
It can even lead to termination
Cure:
Taking up more complex tasks that will give no time for idling.
But the actual cure is only possible if the person kills the cancer fighting it hard. :)
Modified on by Sivanesan B 270005PYDR
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We are collecting, and will be voting on, our favorite ALM Ailments, that is conditions that affect a team or individual in their attempt to be productive with Application Lifecycle Management.
So - here's the first one:
Post Traceability Distress Disorder
PTSD is a potentially debilitating anxiety disorder triggered by exposure to development projects that lack tools for real traceability -- experiences such as trying to find out if the #&^@($ requirement was ever implemented or tested, or what plan items went into the build last night, are known to cause PTSD.
Symptoms include:
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Inability to locate relevant connected information about a project.
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Observed dizziness on attempt to stand up a release
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Unusually high team blood pressure when auditor is present
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Inability to sleep due to excessively high defect rate
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Is your development pipeline bloated and blocked with releases that aren't moving into production?
Taking care of business with frequent movement of capability into production is a sign of a healthy Enterprise system.
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The paralyzing fear and ultimate inaction caused by the thought of having to integrate multiple software systems.
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The fear of passing status spreadsheets back and forth and constantly asking "who has the latest version?"
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Designarrhea is the uncontrolled need to constantly produce highly sophisticated technical design documents and specifications.
Usually observed on subjects working in a waterfall environment, where documents are thrown over the fence after completion
(but need to be reworked constantly).
Symptoms:
- High "output" of technical design documents, that may be technically/methodically elaborated, but give no additional business value
- Spending whole day sitting at the workstation trying to keep everything in sync with reality
- May also lead to social isolation from the rest of the team, due to increasing language disorders.
This is assumed to be a coincidence from a cross-infection with metamodeling-tapeworms and DSLs (document-slavery languages).
Possible cures:
- Apply some "Model Storming cole", leading to "just enough" design to get the job done
- re-sozialize subject by establishing a "whole team" environment, speaking a common language
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Symptoms:
Unhealthy fear of working with others stemming from:
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conditioning that interacting while working is perceived as “goofing off”
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over-stimulation of technology interaction to the detriment of people interaction
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irrational fear that another person’s input could impede the work in my silo
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Severe loss of team function
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Inability to perform simple time zone math
Related Disorders:
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A disorder characterized by the inability to complete tasks because the information that you need to complete the tasks is scattered in a number of different places, and there is so much information coming in that you cannot separate what's important and relevant and what is not.
This condition is exacerbated by technology and the ever-growing number of information sources as they provide even more ways to obtain and leverage information. Results in productivity paralysis.
Symptoms:
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Inability to focus on relevant information
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Inability to complete tasks
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Inability to grasp scattered information
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Impaired visual and auditory function in presence of excessive information
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Symptoms:
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Failure to achieve integration, especially under pressure
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Complications:
qFor integration issues lasting longer than four hours, this may be a sign of a serious problem. You should seek professional help immediately! :-)
Modified on by JenniferMoore 27000212EA
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Manualmosis - a severe cramping condition from manually collecting status information. Known to cause grumpiness and "baditude" for those suffering from the condition. The condition creates a side effect of general grumpiness for all those the infected person comes in contact with, and normally good estimates tends toward garbage.
Symptoms:
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Severe cramping from manually collecting status information
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Observed bloating in email, file system and status meetings
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Impaired ability to do the work that is the basis for the status reporting
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Significant loss of forest vision; can only see trees
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Disorientation while driving (a project)
Modified on by CindyVanEpps 120000EA06
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When your blood pressure is directly proportional to your Application Lifecycle Management deployment.
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The sufferer from Macro-Excelivity has spent so long planning, tracking and estimating project work using excel spreadsheets with their own suite of hand-tuned VBA macros that they now have a complete inability to relate to any other way of approaching the problem, because, as they would put it, "Excel can do anything".
Symptoms include:
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They can often be heard muttering "Oh no I should have pressed shift-F9 for manual recalculate!" and "Aargh I forgot it's control-shift-enter for an array formula" to themselves
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At lunch breaks they may be heard asking colleagues if orange or yellow would be a better color for at-risk activities
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The walls of their work areas are often papered with exploded pie charts and 3-d bar charts so that even when they are using email or editing a document they can at a glance satisfy their need to remind themselves of the power of Excel
Treatment of sufferers has to be approached with extreme care - it may be best to relocate them to a padded cell comfortable room before undertaking any serious re-training.
Modified on by Ian Barnard 270001GVMP
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Osteostatusquosis is a disease leading to fragile bones from lack of strenghtening and improvement. It is usually caused by perfoming the same limited movements over and over.
Symptoms:
Complications:
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Strong indicator of death from Complyhorrexis, a complication resulting from long-term Acute Myasthenia Complitis, in which the Enterprise experiences a rupture caused by a compliance failure.
Modified on by AmyS 100000ST5Q
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GonerHere is a STD (Software Transmitted Disease). It is primarily caused by close-quarters confinement and tube feeding management-imposed deadlines - this causes the developer to have recurring and severe symptoms such as:
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Glassy-eyed stare due to limited visibility into other development areas
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A pale and watery complexion which rapidly develops sunburn even when exposed to normal daylight
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Episodes of itching-to-get-a-better-job
In addition the condition is very contagious particularly between developers confined with other developers in herds teams. This ability to spread with even limited body contact is often cited by managers as the very reason for keeping sub-teams closely co-located and strongly isolated from other teams. This defies all rational logic because it is not unknown for workers to do something called 'socializing' out of work, immediately defeating all management attempts to isolate sufferers.
The symptoms can be treated, but left untreated GonerHere can be terminal for the developer and potentially for anyone he or she comes into contact with - so possibly the whole project team.
Modified on by Ian Barnard 270001GVMP
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You may have heard of Gall Stones which are crystalline accretions capable of causing extreme physical pain when they block the Bile Duct. Mile Stones are a related (but psychological rather than physical) condition which you can see coming from a long way ahead. The apparent lack of threat (because of the distance) causes complacency and a feeling of no pressure, however on waking one morning the sufferer suddenly finds that the Mile Stone is looming over them causing symptoms of twitching, stress, long hours at work, and loss of sleep. The similarity with Gall Stones doesn't sound great but passing a Mile Stone without completing the required work can be a very painful experience - just like that experienced passing a Gall Stone ;-)
Modified on by Ian Barnard 270001GVMP
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