Lessons from a Forced March

Posted by Robert Merrill on December 26, 2011 under Software Development, Software teams | Read the First Comment

My primary client is going live in one week (1/2/2012) on an Order Management System that’s been in the works since March 2011 and was selected in August. For me, it turned into a forced march in mid-November—six-day weeks, extra hours, and more stress all around that I would have liked.

It’s part of my professional mission to prevent such things, and I ended up with one anyway. The tuition’s largely paid, so lets at least make sure we get something out of the course.

• What was the primary cause?
• What were the contributing factors?
• What have been the consequences?
• Could it have been prevented?
• What can I, and you, learn from it?

Stay metaphorically tuned for a series of blog posts, but not for another week or more. One of the direct consequences was no blogging and very little other marketing activity for uFunctional LLC. The long-term consequences of an empty pipeline are about to become apparent.