| I am organising an internal transfer to Shanghai starting Jan 2005... I basically do solutions architecture work...
As part of the work transition, I recently travelled to China to assist with an ongoing project - I found exactly the same thing :-(( Project team of 5~6 people. Tech Lead with everything in his head - he does most of the technical work. Project manager who has no real knowledge of the scope of the project, or status - very difficult to manage - many risks. Other project workers have little knowledge of how the solution works, or what they need to do... much dis-satisfaction. I attempted to document the solution and requirements via reverse engineering... Most of the workers/PJM were appreciative of this - tech lead responses included: "we dont work that way here in China..." and included the story "there was a famous engineer in China that spent X months in his apartment and built a fantastic editor - no documentation - this is how it should be done" "I hate writing documents" So in general, I get the sense that traditionally things have been done in an ad-hoc fashion... Many of the workers are unhappy with this working style, and given time and visibility of how designing and documenting can make things easier for all, they will gradually get there... Good luck with the education process... RM |
My Functional Spec