This post is from the series “Imagine a project” 🙂
So, imagine a project where there’s a deadline for acceptance tests. These tests would determine whether the project is successful (the client accepts it) or it is not. Now, imagine that this project is behind schedule. It’s been behind schedule for as long as you’ve been working on it.
So this deadline is a week away from this fictional current moment. There are a couple of things that have to be implemented. These things are doable, but what happens instead:
- First, a power surge, nothing serious, just a couple of hours.
- Then, the data center is down for a couple of hours, again nothing serious.
- Then, there’s no internet for 5 hours – it comes out that the main route for the ISP to the office is down due to a power surge.
- Then a very important server that is already in production blows up – and there’s no backup system to take it’s place. Yes, I know, mea culpa – it’s our fault that we didn’t (and still don’t) have a recovery plan.
- Then out of a sudden the most important person in the project goes to a vacation for 2 (two) full days without any prior notice, and this is 2 (two) days before the acceptance tests.
- Then the internet goes down again for half a day, and the ISP says it’s going to be down the day after it, AND it could be down on the day of the acceptance tests, so the maintenance team could not be able to monitor the servers.
What does the team do?
- First it rewrites the software module on the blown server, so it could be hosted on one of the other servers. Only in a couple of days.
- Then the whole team moves to another location with internet so that the work could go on.
- Then it renegotiates with the ISP that the downtime be after the acceptance test.
- Then it works it’s ass off so that the project could stand a chance.
What kind of a great team is that?
What kind of magicians can pull this off?
And then the boss says the team is unprofessional. Make him read this!