All of this reminds me of an episode of Dr. Who from the 80s. In the episode, a villain needs some doomsday device repaired and the only person who could do the repair is Dr. Who. So the villain captures Dr. Who and impresses him into service by instructing his killer robot, "Robot, I must attend to other matters. No matter what, make sure Dr. Who does not stop working."
So the villain leaves and Dr. Who begins repairing the doomsday device. Eventually the job is finished, but the villain has not returned yet. So Dr. Who closes up the access panel and begins to walk away. But then the killer robot commands, "WORK!" Dr. Who says, "But the job is finished. The doomsday device is fixed." "WORK!" "But..." "WORK!" Now the robot points his ray gun at Dr. Who. So Dr. Who shrugs his shoulders, opens the access panel, re-damages the doomsday device, and sets out to start repairing it again... -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Rushton Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:17 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? ** Remedy Developer: "Hang on, I'll get my piece of string" Mark Rushton IBM Global Services Remedy Engineering & Development Team Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CS/SCCE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "Action Request System discussion list(ARSList)" <[email protected]> 10/07/2008 15:06 Please respond to [email protected] To [email protected] cc Subject Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? Well I think this points up an major underlying weakness of *all* structured disciplines, be it CMMI, Six Sigma, ISO, or whatever -- it all depends on the people *implementing* the discipline. Unfortunately the world is full of "rules lawyers" who enforce the law not for the intent of the law but by the letter of the law. For example... CMMI implementation person: "It says we need to know how many lines of code are in your Remedy application." Remedy developer: "But Remedy doesn't have 'lines of code.' It's an entirely different development model." CMMI implementer: "We need to know how many lines of code are in your application." Remedy developer: "But I just said..." CMMI implementer: "Are you being difficult?" -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Grooms, Frederick W Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 8:38 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? The really stupid thing is that the CMM/CMMI only defines lines of code as a "Suggested" unit of measure. They also include number of objects. >From CMMI for Development v1.2 Examples of size measures include the following: * Number of functions * Function points * Source lines of code * Number of classes and objects * Number of requirements * Number and complexity of interfaces * Number of pages * Number of inputs and outputs * Number of technical risk items * Volume of data * Number of logic gates for integrated circuits * Number of parts (e.g., printed circuit boards, components, and mechanical parts) * Physical constraints (e.g., weight and volume) Fred -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CS/SCCE Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 7:54 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? Oh contraire! Since the 1980s?! You'd be shocked. It seems like a biggie with CMM/CMMI organizations. Both Gary (who posted earlier) and I have worked in CMM/CMMI controlled organizations, and evidently lines of code is a big metric within it...at least for some organizations. Although I do definitely agree with you that it's 100% stupid. -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bradford Bingel Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 5:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? Geez . . . no one has used the "lines of source code" (SLOC) measurement since the 1980's! It was a poor metric then with monolithic languages (Cobol, Fortran, etc.), and it's an even poorer metric today using object-oriented software and N-tier architectures. But you may still need to provide a valid number. Can anyone from Remedy provide a ballpark SLOC metric by application? -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CS/SCCE Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? Hmmm...Depending entirely on what they want this number for, I would probably recommend not giving them a number. Many organizations nowadays are foolishly using number of lines of code as a benchmark for the complexity of an application. If an app is more than X number of lines of code is very complex...and then management starts asking questions like, "Why is that code so complex? Perhaps we should optimize it? Is there a commercial solution available to replace that inordinately and thus expensive-to-maintain application?" In short, if you give them a number (based on code objects or lines in a def or whatever), that number isn't going to be right. It might be good to make them go away, but they may later use that bogus info to make some sort of executive decision, which may end up putting your app and possibly YOU on the chopping block. -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lammey, Peter A. Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 11:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? ** Maybe the answer to that would be if you exported all your workflow into a def file and then did a count of lines in the file (in Word perhaps) and give them that number. Obviously there is more actual coding behind the scenes than that but its better than providing a useless number. Thanks Peter Lammey ESPN MIT Technical Services & Applications Management 860-766-4761 ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Cook Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 12:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Lines of code" in Remedy? ** You could tell them that it's a closely held piece of BMC proprietary data, and that if you told them, you'd have to kill them. Or, ask them what answer sounds good to them, and give them that number back. Heck, you may even be right, and they'd never be able to prove you wrong. Or, you could simply give them the only number that they'd have a chance to verify - the number of workflow objects in your system. Rick On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 9:19 AM, David.M Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: All, I've been asked to estimate the "number of lines of code we have in Remedy". Any ideas on how to approach a question like that? Feel free to save your response for Friday Humor if you prefer. 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