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sergebroomFree!
At last!
Sort of.
Today (Friday), I finally got my users to sign off on a programming project I had to spend an average work day of 11 hours for 3 weeks for this to happen. Of course a bug in the logic had to come up during these last few days. I had based that logic on a pretty standard structure and yet things were coming out wrong. I spent a couple of days comparing the logics, in case I had made a mistake with my modeling, but no, I had not. Meanwhile, the manager of our user group complained during a conference call that the deadline was looming large (really?) and I wasn’t done yet. Considering that the project had started late due to the questionable prioritizing of other tasks that kept delaying this Very Important Project, and due to the fact that this very person had assigned the project’s testing to a very neophyte user, that rubbed me the wrong way. I confronted that manager in spite of my physically being 1100 miles away from the rest of the group and asked if people thought I had spent the last few weeks twiddling my thumbs.
Ys, I am still gainfully employed.
Things looked so dire yesterday that my overworked team leader offered to look at my work. He didn’t agree with my gut feeling that things were going wrong because we might be using the basic logic for something it wasn’t designed to handle. When I came in this morning, his email suggested that I had not included parts of the standard logic into mine. I wrote and asked why he thought so. Since he’s quite smart, I relied on his judgment, and, while waiting for him to finally explain what he had meant, I spent more than half the day unable to find a solution to the bug. After all, it’s hard not to question yourself when you don’t think something is missing and an expert tells you it is.
Eventually, I decided that he was wrong. Most other systems have had that basic logic distributed among two programs, but, since I had set up one single program, then I must have forgotten something. He never considered that I had simply consolidated the logic into one single program. That will teach me to think outside of the box by putting everything inside one box.
Once I was freed from that self-imposed constraint, and once I decided I was right about about the standard logic being forced to cope with something it wasn't designed to deal with, I quickly found the solution: I took one operation and encapsulated it inside an IF statement. That was it. The last few hours were spent with me testing one special case after the other, and my user confirming each case, until, much to his manager’s relief, he was able to sign off less than one hour before the official deadline. Move over, James Bond, with your from-the-jaws-of-defeat victories.
By the end, much relieved, I found myself feeling like Jack Carter, sheriff of Eureka. With one difference. We both work with many people who who are far more brilliant, but people listen to Jack’s insights.
Mind you, it’s not quite over. Next week, I have to deploy my changes into the final test server, but, with all the bugs and kinks having been worked out, nothing can possibly go wrong.
Unless you’re in Eureka.
At last!
Sort of.
Today (Friday), I finally got my users to sign off on a programming project I had to spend an average work day of 11 hours for 3 weeks for this to happen. Of course a bug in the logic had to come up during these last few days. I had based that logic on a pretty standard structure and yet things were coming out wrong. I spent a couple of days comparing the logics, in case I had made a mistake with my modeling, but no, I had not. Meanwhile, the manager of our user group complained during a conference call that the deadline was looming large (really?) and I wasn’t done yet. Considering that the project had started late due to the questionable prioritizing of other tasks that kept delaying this Very Important Project, and due to the fact that this very person had assigned the project’s testing to a very neophyte user, that rubbed me the wrong way. I confronted that manager in spite of my physically being 1100 miles away from the rest of the group and asked if people thought I had spent the last few weeks twiddling my thumbs.
Ys, I am still gainfully employed.
Things looked so dire yesterday that my overworked team leader offered to look at my work. He didn’t agree with my gut feeling that things were going wrong because we might be using the basic logic for something it wasn’t designed to handle. When I came in this morning, his email suggested that I had not included parts of the standard logic into mine. I wrote and asked why he thought so. Since he’s quite smart, I relied on his judgment, and, while waiting for him to finally explain what he had meant, I spent more than half the day unable to find a solution to the bug. After all, it’s hard not to question yourself when you don’t think something is missing and an expert tells you it is.
Eventually, I decided that he was wrong. Most other systems have had that basic logic distributed among two programs, but, since I had set up one single program, then I must have forgotten something. He never considered that I had simply consolidated the logic into one single program. That will teach me to think outside of the box by putting everything inside one box.
Once I was freed from that self-imposed constraint, and once I decided I was right about about the standard logic being forced to cope with something it wasn't designed to deal with, I quickly found the solution: I took one operation and encapsulated it inside an IF statement. That was it. The last few hours were spent with me testing one special case after the other, and my user confirming each case, until, much to his manager’s relief, he was able to sign off less than one hour before the official deadline. Move over, James Bond, with your from-the-jaws-of-defeat victories.
By the end, much relieved, I found myself feeling like Jack Carter, sheriff of Eureka. With one difference. We both work with many people who who are far more brilliant, but people listen to Jack’s insights.
Mind you, it’s not quite over. Next week, I have to deploy my changes into the final test server, but, with all the bugs and kinks having been worked out, nothing can possibly go wrong.
Unless you’re in Eureka.
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no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2008 05:37 am (UTC)Susan
http://www.rixosous.com
no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2008 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2008 07:01 am (UTC)Bwahahaha! Clearly you've just doomed yourself....
no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2008 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 20th, 2008 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 02:46 am (UTC)Nice save on the IF clause thingy. I feel your pain - it's difficult if you have a good intuitive sense of what's wrong and someone else's intuition doesn't match up.
no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 12:17 pm (UTC)That being said, while my teamleader's offer to help got in the way, he was trying to help. I appreciated that very much.
no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 21st, 2008 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 22nd, 2008 12:03 pm (UTC)Now of course telecommuting is fast. And fairly easy. Unfortunately, we can work from home with as much ease as if we were at the office. Which means that our bosses expect us to work from home when we're not at the office.
Such is corporate America.
Oh well.