Heads Down

So I have been a little slow getting my blogs posted lately. I had ½ of them written but I was just too busy at work to actually get them posted on line. Most I had written while on flights. The only time I have had lately to get a break. For the past 2 months I have been a project that is in some trouble. They are 150% behind their time line, and I think that is only going to get worse. Luckily the project was not run by my company we are only responsible for a small portion of the project. But now as they are getting close to go-live and are still having some serious troubles we were asked to help and somehow I got roped into it.

So I was asked to build some reports that married SAP data and Legacy data to validate the client’s conversion processes. Normally we train the client functional experts to do this so they can create whatever they need on the fly. Then they build reports of ½ dozen fields at a time. This client however only wanted a set of excel sheets with magic buttons that gave them a yes the data is good or no it is not response without much work. And they wanted it fast, for several very complex data objects. What we should have said is that it simply wasn’t practical, or at the very least we should use a more robust platform than excel. What we said, or rather a manager who is not me said, is sure. So project management promises and I am tasked with delivering.

So for the last 9 weeks I have had my head down and my fingers smoking on the keyboard trying to build these tools/reports for the client. It took nearly twice as long and the client will have no way to fix them if they break or update them for future waves, but I am almost finished with the assignment and able to breathe a little more again. I have done 55-70 hour weeks before, even for a few weeks straight, but 9 weeks straight was a little much. Suffice to say, that manage is now on my “Do not work with again” list. Funniest part about it, they threw him off the project and kept me! Oi… Hopefully it is on to better things.