We are leaving for Elkader after work tomorrow. Not sure when I'll sit in front of this PC.
I got sucked into reading what I wrote about five large projects at work. I thought enough time had passed that I could give an update on them, since they were important enough to write about back then.
Project A is a huge change that has to do with how our clients process something. We have to be certified by someone and then, after we deliver the software to our clients, the clients need to be audited and certified. The way this has to work is that it has to arrive on 3/12 (that Friday). Selfishly, that week (3/15) is going to be a very busy week at work. The timeline for testing and documenting the changes to the system have a two week window. There are consultants involved so it will be very important that everyone stays on-time.
As of 7/29/2010, this has been released to our clients. There are minor issues that creep in occasionally, but overall, this was a successful project.
Project B means a lot of work for me. It involves buckling down and writing some content that I have been procrastinating. It is not that the content is difficult to write - I think I could bang it out in a day - it's that I think it's overview material, about something stupid that no one is going to read. It's content that should be covered in a training class but since we don't really do training classes like we used to - clients seem to magically end up with a new system on their PCs - I understand I need to write the content. There is also a lot of project B that I need to write in other areas, besides the aforementioned overview. I am comfortable with where I am, but there are holes I need to fill in.
As of 7/29/2010, this project was delayed a software release. It is scheduled to go out soon. I finished the work I had put off and, actually, wrote that content in a morning. It went a lot better than I thought it was going to go.
Project C involves doing the user interface work I do and making records that display in pink display, well, in pink. If you imagine a floor with a carpet. The programmers code the floor and I design the carpet that everyone sees. I don't know if that really makes sense or not. I had to submit a call report to the software vendor that makes the "carpet" because the obvious ways to make the records display in pink did not work.
This turned out to be a fairly simple change. I got on the phone with the software vendor and worked it out.
Project D is also a user interface project. When you are in Add mode, F16 should never be enabled. However, if I set it up where F16 is disabled in Add mode, it is disabled in Change mode as well. I tried all the obvious, and not so obvious, things I know how to do but it didn't seem to work. I asked for a call from the vendor and I need to get that resolved.
This was something that I was able to work through as well. Same software vendor customer support person helped me.
Project E is a huge change to one of our systems. Not only are there going to be UI changes - the carpet - but there will also be a lot of documentation changes. I've come to the conclusion that while it is not scheduled for release until the April/May timeframe, I cannot delay working on it until then. This area of the system continually has smaller changes but this is a larger one. I am hoping my co-worker is available to take some of the documentation work off my plate. However, I know that she is busy too so that's kind of an on-going storyline.
As of 7/29/2010, if I remember exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote the above, the scope of the project narrowed and it is not nearly as big of a nightmare as I originally feared it would be.
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