I'd meant to put up another post today - maybe something on the topic of Lying With Facts, which I've been meaning to write for a while - but we've officially started installing the new website. For those coming in late (which is probably everyone, now that I think about it), we're undertaking a complete redesign of our primary website: moving it to a new server, moving to new Content Management software, moving to a completely new look and layout.
So far, it's going exactly as well as I expected. (I have that Dilbert strip posted on the wall of my cubicle. It's been there since it was published. It turns out that you actually can tell the future from comic strips, using a mystic art known as Graphispication, and this is my first successful prediction.)
On Monday we're scheduled to start moving content across from the old server to the new server. That, of course, presupposed that the installation of the software for the new site got finished yesterday (Thursday). It's now midmorning on Friday. We're still working out the bugs in the install. Even assuming it gets finished today, we will have no time to test it before Monday. You see where this is going, right? I feel compelled to point out that according to the original timeline for the project, the new site was supposed to go live back in February of this year.
So consider this an open thread. Suggested topics include computer problems, doomed and/or hellish projects at work, and whether or not it's moral to actively hope that zombies, plague, or soul-devouringly-horrible Lovecraftian beasties will intervene to make the whole project unnecessary.
I spent over an hour this morning in a meeting where my boss (Bozo the Clown) decreed that the new customer I've been working on onboarding will not go live on our Current Production System (where we configured a test site and have shown them demos), but a Re-platformed Production System.
ReplyDeleteIn February.
Using a technology we just signed a contract for (despite the advice of the systems architect) and no developer has yet gotten training in. (Incidentally, Current Production System has no Flash components, but new technology dictates Flash, and Adobe has just declared "Hey, Steve Jobs was right--you can't do Flash on mobile devices." And the majority of our user base uses Macs. And customers have been promised iPad/iPhone availability.)
In February.
Current Production System has evolved over 5 years, and has north of 1.5M lines of code. He wants a ground-up re-write, building on a different data platform, so every subsystem this customer's data will touch will also need to be modified.
In February.
I am supposed to have requirements collected by the beginning of December.
The system architect and I are watching the clock until we think we can safely sneak off and drink ourselves into oblivion.
Ye Gods, I believe you have me beat. Can you include "An Old-Testament-style Miracle" in the requirements?
ReplyDeleteAlso, for some reason your comment showed up as "spam." No idea why. Obviously I've restored it to visibility now.
There are probably at least several xkcd comics about this. You know, for once I'm glad I just have mountains of homework.
ReplyDelete