In Competence

I know it has been quite a while since last post… so King Van doth ‘pick it up’ now, before being reminded to do so by his loyal subjects and royal family of van members… First off, I want to comment on the recent blogs of vanberge4, vanbergs, vanlandw, and honorary prince van Flo.

“G.G.” – 15 minutes of fame all around…!!!

Now, to the vile deeds causing the inception of this post…

King Van was given the job of “Independent Software Assessor” at work last year, and as part of my duties, I have to review the safety of software code, results of code reviews and testing, and work with the contracted software consultants brought in at obscene pricing in peices of gold. Earlier I posted about how inept some of these consultants have been, and how frustrating it is having to correct errors in the way they do their jobs.

The latest round of testing completed this week merely solidified this King’s opinion. A negative report regarding code review of some modules prompted the review of these modules personally, to see why code review wasn’t detecting the ’seeded errors’ induced by the consultants. Last time the King had to do this, I found that 30% of the supposed errors seeded into the code DID NOT EXIST. I don’t know if they forgot to save the files after seeding, or if I was given the wrong seeded code. Nonetheless, this second round was supposed to conducted with enough controls in place to insure that this problem wouldn’t happen again.

This week’s review started with a report that had incorrect calculations by the consultants, and when the King asked for the seeded code files for review, I was given the wrong files, ones that were not original, yet ones that were different than the actual seeded versions that were reviewed. When I started reviewing the files, I could not verify the existence of ANY of the ‘reported’ seeded errors. I had to go back to the consultants, after wasting 2 hours looking at wrong files, and ask if they were sure they gave me the correct ones. Shortly afterwards, I got a copy of a different set of files, this time the ‘correct’ seeded code files… Hmmmm… sounds like it is out of control again.

Ended up spending another 8 hours reviewing the files, and found that in each of them, some of the reported seeded errors were not there for the reviewers to discover.  5% of them, to be exact.

Consultants beware… You won’t survive long in the Kingdom of Van by providing incompetent analysis and services. Earn the gold you yearn for and get paid - by providing full measure of professionalism and process control.

This King tires of wasted time correcting the blunders of highly paid ‘professionals’…

BRB