Some days….
My plan
Some days just drive you up the wall. You go to work with a plan:
- Get a Siebel dev system running on Randi’s PC. (4 hours, probably.)
- Continue to map out the dev strategy for the Call Center’s Siebel project. (2 hours, if possible.)
- An internal user group meeting on Ad Hoc reporting should provide some relief from the more serious work.
Then you get to see if it survives.
Reality bites
The day started OK. I got Randi’s PC set up in about three and a half hours. But then I couldn’t get her login to work right; need to figure that out tomorrow.
Meantime, our web app project’s become a bit of a (mild) feud. The IT staff believes the vendor is ignoring their (real) problems; the vendor, on the other hand, complains that the IT coders are using the escalation procedures before notifying the vendor that things have gone wrong. Both groups have some legitimate issues, and Margie and I keep getting caught in the middle.
Even though I’m more or less off this project (we need to get another kick-started), I was (virtually, via Terminal Services) into the server stack three times today in an effort to troubleshoot the problems. Properly speaking, this should have been an IT intervention, except everyone knows I understand the system. Hey, I’m a business analyst. I shouldn’t be fixing server apps.
There goes most of the time–and all of the energy–I had budgeted for the development effort. Had a short chat with my boss about that.
The Ad Hoc reporting user group meeting was kind of fun. I agreed to document a process some other folks need to understand for their projects. Not sure when I’ll find time.
Tomorrow
- Tomorrow morning’s pretty much shot, with two meetings scheduled. One for each project, as it happens; Margie needs to nail down some procedural issues for the old project, while a consultant needs my input about some technical matters on the new one.
- After that, I’ll try to figure out what I did wrong with Randi’s permissions. (Might borrow the consultant for that.)
- With any luck, I’ll get back to the dev planning before the day ends.
I imagine I’ll get shanghaied by the web app, somewhere along the way. Life’s like that.
Next Week
The dev project requires tweaking the (VB-like) code on an existing system so that we can install an upgrade to the base product. We’ll also be making a few minor modifications to the system because we’ll have the system’s guts exposed. If it goes well, this will be fun; coding’s something I enjoy in small doses. This dose should be around two months, which is about my limit. Long coding sessions tend to make me anti-social.
Assuming the web system’s coders stop squabbling, that system will be ready for testing late next week. Since I’m running the user testing on the web project, that will become priority for a few days. We’ll see how that goes….
Somehow I’ll find time to draft that document for the user group, too…
Update November 17: As expected, the web problems messed up Friday’s plan; Margie and I lost most of the afternoon to them. Looks like we may finally have this under control….