Painfully Better Next Time

We all experience challenges in the workplace, but some of the challenges are largely out of our control and we have to learn how to deal with those situations, as unfortunate as they may be.

I recently had a project reach the Go Live point. A fair bit of work went into the whole thing over many months, with a little period of a pause before it was resumed. Things were going at a normal clip and then we started to hit issues. People were obligated to do a few things on their part but they didn't bother to do them. Then we were going to do some user training and nobody showed up. At that point I knew that we were in for some trouble...

These situations are very challenging because they are certainly complex - the balance of being a project manager but also balancing the fact that I project manage for MY team and company, not BOTH of our teams and companies. That's frankly unacceptable, to be honest. That is what I was encountering with this recent project that went live. I was having to do the work for them even though they have to do their due dilgence..

I will say that the people I was working with are definitely good people, knowledgeable in their craft and also people I would consider going out for a drink or something with. They weren't a bunch of assholes which is always refreshing, but at the same time, business versus personal is where it has to come down to. The business part of it was really failing with this one and it was quite difficult to deal with!

We ran into issue after issue when the thing went live and thankfully after a few days, we were able to resolve most of those issues and only one or two of them were truly product defects but damn it, it was really frustrating. It was especially evident at the end of the day the other day where we realized that a significant cause of their pain and issues was because they didn't follow the documentation that we provided them back at the beginning of the whole thing.. where it had technical requirements they were supposed to meet on their side. Details, right? LOL

When we realized that the likely cause of the issues were the lack of these technical requirements being met, they rallied the troops on their side and ended up getting the requirements met and we made some adjustments, rebooted some stuff and let it go. Would you look at that, the biggest issues are gone! Bah, that was fucking brutal hahaha.

I'm glad that we got it resolved for sure, but it's one of those situations where I went above and beyond the call of duty to get this customer to a good spot, working with them and some of my resources for hours on end and really pushing them on some of the issues that they thought might not be related, but in the end were indeed related.

The takeaway that I've got with this whole thing is that I need to remind and hand-hold people sometimes in order for them to get their pieces in place but that doesn't mean that I should be doing their work for them. We have to balance being conscientious but also restrained; if we are constantly doing other peoples work then we will get burnt out and overwhelmed because we are not resourced for those things. I really took it as a good learning opportunity that I need to make sure I call these things out in meetings with people, to put them on the spot to make sure all of the requirements are met. I was too lax with this one and it caused some unnecessary pain but as I and many others say, the most memorable lessons are the most painful ones. Damn if that wasn't the case LOL