Enough

I've had enough. I just want the project to be over now.

Launch dates slip through my fingers more easily than sand.

The Irish team are demonstrating an admirable level of patience that I will never achieve.

I feel as though every hour that passes brings with it a new problem or issue.

I'm mentally exhausted. My days are filled with too much emotion. There are highs and lows but it's the frustration that is so terribly draining. I'd love to leave work at work but I can't.

I felt I needed an escape, so I went to yoga tonight. As the group was relaxing I was thinking about problems and potential solutions, bugs, screw ups, issues, deadlines and priorities.

My colleagues are sick of me. My family are living with a monster. I struggle to see who the winners are.

I want it to end. I want the vision that we had all that time ago to be a reality. Almost there isn't good enough.

Mole

The ENGInE team has a mole whose identity must remain a secret.

Today they sent me this:



It inspires confidence don't you think?

Numpty of the day award

Apologies for my absence, I've been busy.

"About time" I hear you cry. I know, I know. A project of this magnitude, on three days a week, you're thinking it's amazing I find time to breathe let alone blog.

Well a lot of blogging happens in my own time and I have snippets of my own time seven days a week, and this is one such snippet. If you must know, I'm uploading pictures from the weekend to Flickr, and it takes forever, and I'm bored.

Anyway...Numpty of the day:

Large projects don't always run smoothly, rather like the course of true love. We spent most of today locked in a dark room trying to get our heads around a problem and come up with a solution. Coffee was a definite requirement at three o'clock when spirits and creativity were at a low ebb.

Let me explain the problem, without getting too technical.

Component copy was a feature of ENGInE, or so we thought. That's one of the problems with listening to sales people. They tell one things and one foolishly believes them.

Component copy allows one to copy a bit of one site, and plonk it into another site. It's a very handy (some would say essential) piece of functionality.

It appears that the product, as delivered, is missing this funky piece of code.

Today we ran through a million (exaggerating for effect) scenarios involving cutting, pasting, copying, sharing, translating, overtime, double time, triple time, intravenous caffeine, Prozac on demand and the rest.

It was just after we had discounted several of these many wonderful suggestions that Rishi said "Why don't we just copy that and then send it out?" which is exactly what component copy does and which is exactly what we don't have and can't do (right now).

This may not be funny to you, but after too many hours, and not enough coffee or calories, we found it rather too amusing.

So, sorry Rishi. I'm not picking on you, honestly. It's just that today hurt my head, and the laugh was needed.

Best laid plans

No project is perfect. This project is far from perfect. But...

When we hit problems and delays we work our collective backsides off to try and get back on track. We try and catch back time so that we don't compromise the launch date.

I've been presented with numerous change requests where I've said "No. This will delay the project and it's a change that, whilst it's nice to have, isn't essential for launch. Make this a post launch change."

I guess it's all about the leadership behaviours that we all know and love and the Drive for Results motivator is the one that's driving me right now, and throughout this project. I guess that's why it's all the more depressing when something hits us that we can't control.

We always knew that hardware sourcing was a risk on the project. It shouldn't be a risk but it is. It should be as simple as outlining requirements, placing an order, receiving delivery and setting everything up. It's not that simple. Don't ask me to explain why it's not that simple because I'll start to get politically incorrect, but it's not that simple.

(If you detect some irritation then you're very perceptive.)

So we expected hardware on Jan 18th and we didn't receive it. Our new delivery date was February 28th and once again nothing was delivered.

We have received something now and we're going through the process of ensuring everything is as it should be and is to spec but it's almost two months late.

I've been trying to think of an analogy that demonstrates how out of our control this part of the development is, so here goes.

Imagine you plan to launch a car in one factory on January 18th but an earthquake demolishes the factory on January 15th. It takes time to recover and rebuild and it's something you couldn't have prevented because it was an act of God.

I'm not suggesting that our hardware suppliers and God are related, far from it, but both are seemingly out of (our) control.

Trenchcoat required

There aren't many people on the team who have nicknames, or at least publicly known nicknames. Well we think Christian has coined one.

From now on Rishi shall be known as Columbo. He doesn't wear a raincoat but he does have a habit, just as a meeting is closing, of saying "Just one more thing."

In the thick of it

OK, New Year, new boss. What's changed?

Well not much actually, but give Dave a chance, he barely has his toes under the table.

Last week I sat in on some Fatwire training. Fatwire is the engine behind ENGInE if that isn't too complicated. It's the platform/software/language upon which ENGInE is being built.

Dee, who took the course, probably got a bit fed up with me. I kept asking questions. I know it's quite difficult to shut me up at the best of times but we kept going off at tangents because I wanted to know about this, that and the other.

The good news is that I wasn't bluffing when I told all of you that the new Content Management Tool would be more user friendly and more efficient.

You see when I told you all that I was relying on information given to me. I hadn't seen the tool, except for a brief presentation from a Fatwire salesman, and we all know how reliable sales people are.

It is far more flexible than Firefly.

Test

Brendan is off to South Africa to be Mazda's General Manager out there.

He says he'll still be logging in to check how the project's progress. I joked that he wouldn't remember this URL. We'll see.

So Brendan - if you are reading this then leave a comment and we'll know you still care.

And to everyone else - Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.