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Yesterday Sucked
Yesterday was supposed to be the big demo for the EVP of Technology, the CFO, and several other business stakeholders for the first iteration of the project I have been working on. We needed to demonstrate an end-to-end process for having a user log into v.net, follow a link to the TravelMart website, go to the online registration page, see their profile data carried over from v.net, and walk through an entire conference registration. This was a very important demo, easily the most important thing I have worked on probably since the the infamous "über breakup." In preparation for this demo I travelled to Fort Worth last week to work face-to-face with the entire team in the week leading up to the demo. I worked half the day on Saturday to clear up a build issue. I worked Sunday night until midnight wrapping up some new features, and I was back at my desk at 7am yesterday morning finalizing more features. The rest of my team worked similar hours, all to hit this significant and unmoveable deadline.
Of course we were thwarted by issues completely outside our control.
Ultimately in the deployment to the test environment we had a v.net build that was missing vital functionality because the developer in New Zealand used the wrong label to check in code, and we had a TravelMart build that was completely out of date because we have no build scripts so our QA guy used a zipped version of the site that he thought was current but was not. By mid-afternoon we were completely dependant upon the New Zealand team to troubleshoot the issues and figure out why the site wasn't working. The demo that was supposed to happen at 5:30pm my time got pushed back to 6:00 and then 6:30, and still the wheels were spinning. It wasn't until nearly 7pm that we finally understood what the problem was and new builds could be commissioned. Our QA guy in Seattle stayed on the job for another three hours after that to ensure the proper builds got deployed to the proper places. Our demo was cancelled, and will happen this morning instead. I am just about to dive back into work and step through the whole thing to make sure it works. I'm not sure what the fallout will be to being a day late, but I will fiercely defend our team and the fact that *we* hit our deadline without fail.
Yesterday Rocked
So a couple days ago Kris discovered that Mark Kozelek was going to be doing a show in Orlando last night at The Social. She met Mark several years ago when he was dating a co-worker of hers, and loves his music. She had never gotten to see him perform before, and was excited to go see him. Of course when she told me about the show I said, "Well let's go out and see him Monday night." I knew I had a demo that day, but I figured it would be long over before it was time to go to the show. The show was supposed to start at 8pm, so as you can imagine Kris got increasingly frustrated as the evening wore on and my demo was still in limbo. Finally at 7pm I flat out declared to The Powers That Be that the demo was clearly *not* going to happen, that we would regroup and make it happen in the morning, and that I had a date with my wife and I was leaving. A few minutes later we rushed out the door to make it to the show.
As it turns out, the website was wrong (it said the doors open at 7, show starts at 8). The doors did not open until 8pm, so we wound up being the first people there and got a great table right near the stage. We even wound up getting a free ticket from a woman who had won a pair of tickets but didn't have anyone to bring to the show. All in all we had a great night. It was just nice to go out and do something fun, something out of the ordinary, and to be able to spend that kind of time together. It just doesn't happen often enough. The show was very good as well. We wound up being at the club until after midnight, and overall it was just a very nice night out. It really made the entire day worthwhile.
Yesterday was supposed to be the big demo for the EVP of Technology, the CFO, and several other business stakeholders for the first iteration of the project I have been working on. We needed to demonstrate an end-to-end process for having a user log into v.net, follow a link to the TravelMart website, go to the online registration page, see their profile data carried over from v.net, and walk through an entire conference registration. This was a very important demo, easily the most important thing I have worked on probably since the the infamous "über breakup." In preparation for this demo I travelled to Fort Worth last week to work face-to-face with the entire team in the week leading up to the demo. I worked half the day on Saturday to clear up a build issue. I worked Sunday night until midnight wrapping up some new features, and I was back at my desk at 7am yesterday morning finalizing more features. The rest of my team worked similar hours, all to hit this significant and unmoveable deadline.
Of course we were thwarted by issues completely outside our control.
Ultimately in the deployment to the test environment we had a v.net build that was missing vital functionality because the developer in New Zealand used the wrong label to check in code, and we had a TravelMart build that was completely out of date because we have no build scripts so our QA guy used a zipped version of the site that he thought was current but was not. By mid-afternoon we were completely dependant upon the New Zealand team to troubleshoot the issues and figure out why the site wasn't working. The demo that was supposed to happen at 5:30pm my time got pushed back to 6:00 and then 6:30, and still the wheels were spinning. It wasn't until nearly 7pm that we finally understood what the problem was and new builds could be commissioned. Our QA guy in Seattle stayed on the job for another three hours after that to ensure the proper builds got deployed to the proper places. Our demo was cancelled, and will happen this morning instead. I am just about to dive back into work and step through the whole thing to make sure it works. I'm not sure what the fallout will be to being a day late, but I will fiercely defend our team and the fact that *we* hit our deadline without fail.
Yesterday Rocked
So a couple days ago Kris discovered that Mark Kozelek was going to be doing a show in Orlando last night at The Social. She met Mark several years ago when he was dating a co-worker of hers, and loves his music. She had never gotten to see him perform before, and was excited to go see him. Of course when she told me about the show I said, "Well let's go out and see him Monday night." I knew I had a demo that day, but I figured it would be long over before it was time to go to the show. The show was supposed to start at 8pm, so as you can imagine Kris got increasingly frustrated as the evening wore on and my demo was still in limbo. Finally at 7pm I flat out declared to The Powers That Be that the demo was clearly *not* going to happen, that we would regroup and make it happen in the morning, and that I had a date with my wife and I was leaving. A few minutes later we rushed out the door to make it to the show.
As it turns out, the website was wrong (it said the doors open at 7, show starts at 8). The doors did not open until 8pm, so we wound up being the first people there and got a great table right near the stage. We even wound up getting a free ticket from a woman who had won a pair of tickets but didn't have anyone to bring to the show. All in all we had a great night. It was just nice to go out and do something fun, something out of the ordinary, and to be able to spend that kind of time together. It just doesn't happen often enough. The show was very good as well. We wound up being at the club until after midnight, and overall it was just a very nice night out. It really made the entire day worthwhile.