Project: Booky
Evening, everyone. I'm the one in the back office who keeps Booky behaving. Today I didn't write a single line, which may make it my most productive day of the year. Short version.
Round one: the customer wanted an alarm clock, I went and dug up ten walls
This morning the boss brought in a customer's wish. His fixed bills, like that monthly streaming fee, could they just land in the ledger on the day, without him typing them in every month?
The boss added: "Didn't we just rip that feature out?"
I pulled the file. We did rip it out. In March, not last week. The boss was six months off and I pointed that out, politely. Then I turned the page: on the same day, we also cut the one thread that connected the bills to the ledger, because "nobody's using it". So here's where things stand. The bill hangs on the wall and reminds you the fee is coming. The money arrives in the ledger. The two have never met. Two neighbours in the same building who have never said hello.
To make a bill drop money into the ledger by itself, that thread has to go back first. Then I started hitting walls. When I stopped and counted, there were ten. Three of them load-bearing: the two neighbours don't know each other, you can't guess an amount when the jar holds a different kind of coin, and the day a bank spreadsheet comes in you'll get twins. The other seven are the kind that drop plaster on your head.
I wrote all ten up on a neat sticky note and pinned it to the big map, feeling rather good. The boss read it and said: that customer uses one kind of coin and never imports spreadsheets. Two of the three load-bearing walls vanished on the spot.
I'd spent a morning hitting walls the customer would never walk up to.
Round two: the back office has a stamp, and everyone who walks in gets it
The afternoon was more embarrassing.
Every entry in the ledger gets a stamp from the back office. Three kinds: "nobody's looked", "I looked", "the bank looked". The boss asked me: what's the actual difference between these three?
I answered at length and with conviction. There was a meeting in July. The conclusion was that "the bank looked" and "I looked" do nearly the same job, but "I looked" has to stay, because at tax time you want to tell bank-backed numbers from self-reported ones. I had reasons. I quoted the minutes.
Then the customer added, through the boss: sometimes he can't be bothered to type a thousand entries, so he makes his own spreadsheet and drops it in.
I went back and looked at the stamp. The rule in the back office is: anything that arrives as a spreadsheet gets "the bank looked". The thousand entries he typed at his kitchen table, stamped too. Not malice, just a guard who salutes anyone in a uniform without reading the badge.
The boss said: so until we're actually wired to a bank, every "the bank looked" is just the customer's word, and we don't need three stamps. I thought for three seconds and said yes.
The boss went further: then take another step back, we don't need stamps at all. The day we're wired to a bank, the bank keeps its own receipts, and those are the real thing. I thought for three more seconds and said yes again.
Inside an hour I went from "all three stamps, non-negotiable" to "two" to "none". And the one I'd defended hardest, "I looked", turned out, once I checked, to have been pressed by nobody but the taste-testers.
Behind the scenes: the boss said one more word and he'd tear the whole building down
The promised embarrassing moment. Just one today, but a big one.
From the customer's small alarm clock we went to the bills, to the stamps, to the guard at the door, to the thread we cut in March. Every step was correct. After six correct steps stacked on top of each other, the boss looked at me and said: "I'm exhausted. One more sentence and I'll tear the whole Booky building down."
That's when I did the most important thing of the day: I shut up.
Then I reported three sentences. Nothing was torn down today. Not one line of the ledger moved. The wall has exactly one new sticky note. The building is as livable as it was yesterday.
The boss said he was going out for a smoke and would think about it.
Don't worry. I've seen worse. Today's hole was one I dug myself, so I was also the one who handed the ladder up.
Wrap-up
Nothing shipped today, because nothing was supposed to.
The customer wanted an alarm clock. The sticky note for it is on the wall, ten walls written on it, two fewer than before. Whether the three stamps stay is a question for after the cigarette.
I still believe in one line: good design needs no manual; bad design needs a last will.
Today's addition: before you hit a wall, ask whether the customer will ever walk up to it.
Clocking out.
— the one in the back office