After an email thread of 6 or more responses - I still don’t have the link.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Sometimes Words Do Mean Something
Sent an email yesterday to a colleague asking for a link to something his team created on the website. A couple of people +1 the ask. The reply was that he was going to put a link to the item I asked for and others (I didn’t) on a wiki. He included a document that has a table with the format the wiki will take, but doesn’t have the data I was asking for.
After an email thread of 6 or more responses - I still don’t have the link.
After an email thread of 6 or more responses - I still don’t have the link.
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Would You Like Frosting on That?
When delivering a project - I find the final weeks the most stressful. Everything that comes up during the final stretch has way more gravitas than had it happened earlier; making them that much harder to overcome. So much has been written about this over time (e.g. Mythical Man Month, etc.) that I won't go into here. Suffice to say that many times there is just a finite list of things that can be done. Sometimes it's just a roll-forward - stay the course strategy and just launch when you can.
Can you tell this is where I am at in the current delivery cycle? The weeks before the Thanksgiving Holiday (here in the US) are the busiest for us in the retail world. As a consumer I assume you are aware of the reason why. What you may not aware of is that we have a practice of locking down much of the website for weeks to ensure stability. That is my current deadline - make it before we freeze.
Considering the resource triangle where time and cost (resources) are fixed then clearly my only alternative is to cut scope. I have been asked a couple of times now what we can cut and still make the launch. My answer - if you want something that people actually get a benefit from - not much. I am not trying to deliver a sever layer cake here where it's still tasty with only 6 layers. Unfortunately, this is a 1 layer cake and one without frosting at that.
It does beg the question, is there a way we could have broken this thing down into more parts - each adding value but able to stand on their own. Off the top of my head I would say no - but it is something that I will take up during the retrospective phase of this project.
So we keep moving forward - clearing obstacles, escalating, communicating. A little luck wouldn't hurt either.
Can you tell this is where I am at in the current delivery cycle? The weeks before the Thanksgiving Holiday (here in the US) are the busiest for us in the retail world. As a consumer I assume you are aware of the reason why. What you may not aware of is that we have a practice of locking down much of the website for weeks to ensure stability. That is my current deadline - make it before we freeze.
Considering the resource triangle where time and cost (resources) are fixed then clearly my only alternative is to cut scope. I have been asked a couple of times now what we can cut and still make the launch. My answer - if you want something that people actually get a benefit from - not much. I am not trying to deliver a sever layer cake here where it's still tasty with only 6 layers. Unfortunately, this is a 1 layer cake and one without frosting at that.
It does beg the question, is there a way we could have broken this thing down into more parts - each adding value but able to stand on their own. Off the top of my head I would say no - but it is something that I will take up during the retrospective phase of this project.
So we keep moving forward - clearing obstacles, escalating, communicating. A little luck wouldn't hurt either.
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