… or why we need Requirements Engineers by Patrick Schmöllerl
Long, long time ago in a distant country lived an ambitious senior manager. He was one of the CEO’s favorites senior managers due to his prowess to tackle difficult projects and his constant and reproducible success. He was moreover admired by his subordinates for he never asked for more than he was able to deliver himself. Every time he passed them on the way to a meeting, the other senior managers would cast glances at him and brooded over the secret of his success.
And indeed, a secret he kept. He held a great treasure, more valueable than any gem or any lump of gold could ever be. He was in possession of the only copy of the legendary Powerpoint to Java Converter. The Converter would magically transform any presentation into clean and comprehensive Java Code and if need be also build and deploy it.
A new sales strategy? Transformed into software in seconds. Only days later, sales skyrocketed. A new CRM for marketing? No problem for the Powerpoint to Java Converter. In seconds the marketing department was relieved of all the pain they experienced useing their old flawed CRM. A datamigration? Data transformed in the blink of an eye. A datawarehouse? The CEO had his reports before he knew he needed it.
The Converter was not only fast as lightning, it was also smart and would inherently understand business needs. It could analyze even topics with steep learning curves. Charts and bullet points magically turned into well balanced set of features, not a single one missing, not a single one too much. The Converter also had the habit of writing excellent documentation to facilitate later maintenance.
It was a golden time for the corporation. All thanks to the splendid Powerpoint to Java Converter and the ambitious senior manager. However, with every successful completion of a project, the envy of the other managers grew larger and larger. One day after the Powerpoint to Java Converter had just increased productivity and reduced costs, the other managers came together and discussed how to dispose of the senior manager.
They pleaded with the CEO who wanted to have none of it. No pleas, no promises, no threats would change the CEO’s mind. So the oldest and wisest of the managers came up with a cunning plan. He prepared a presentation so boring and pointless that every attendee soon fell asleep. As soon as the unwanted senior manager was sound asleep, one of the conspirators transfered a vicious virus onto the laptop.
Shamed by the his own lack of prudence, the senior manager disappeard and was never ever seen again. With him also the miraculous Powerpoint to Java Converter disappeard. Since that day Powerpoints can not be converted into Software in the blink of an eye. Since that day we need Requirements Engineers to make sense of Powerpoints before we can turn them into real-world-software.
I can’t offer a real Powerpoint to Java Converter, but if you need a requirements engineer contact me! If you, however, simply enjoy reading stories, you could also check out one of my favorite spare time projects fairytalenight.com
Very beautiful and entertaining fairytale, Patrick! It’s a real shame that the “PPT-to-Code”-converter got lost…it would have perfectly harmonized with my favorite magical tool, the automatic “PPT-CEOs-will-love”-generator.
Keep your spirit and keep up your excellent work!
Best regards, Armin
p.s. also your side-project is cool!
Indeed, those two generators would perfectly fit together in an automated vision-to-deploy-pipleline.
Keep spiraling up 🙂
Best regards,
Patrick