use Perl

As you can read from my previous journal entry I have a lot on my table, since I am finishing stuff for to other developers.

Well, the last week has been close to a living hell. I had to put 4 applications into production.

This success rate has been somewhat limited, but at least I have gotten some things out of the way.

• A Large application to integrate some payments stuff, should be tested and put into production. First test by our team project manager who wanted to have a look resulted in stuff to do since things was not completely finished. This application has passed UAT - so there must be a hole in the process somewhere???

  I found this amusing and concerning, but good thing to have a project manager like that. The deployment got halted due to security issues, these have been clarified and I am in the process of getting the application ready for deployment, but I want to have it tested first, with the security measures in place, this has proven more difficult than expected

• Roll out of a small application, which should talk to a third party system. A forth party had at first promised that the third party could do EVERYTHING. However after they got home, we where told that it was not possible, but they would look into a solution. The deadline approached, the application was implemented towards the original APIs of the third party, knowing that we would suffer under this. Then the forth party introduces a fifth party that implements a wrapper. I get the assignment and look into the wrapper, which I am told is transparent. The on the day of the deadline I recieve new specifications to the APIs.

  Confused - I implement these the alterations, test and get things rolling. Concerned that the decision and orders given in relation to the application seem to not be agreed on by all parties, I guess even the smallest of projects should have a project manager, just to keep things in the clear, since everybody where just pointing fingers in the end.

• Minor application roll out of a form mailer like application, everything worked great in test - I thought, but when configuring the service and deploying it in production the generated mails did to arrived where expected, proved to be a bug introduced by myself, but I located it and fixed it.

  I guess unit-tests should be done even for small things and I would have implemented these if I was not so damn stressed by the amount of work. The problem with stress and workload is that it also screws with your focus and you start making mistakes.

• Finalization of a prototype and getting it ready for production. A new organization branch wants to be all online, but instead of getting the online team to do the stuff in line with everything on the current platform, no they have hired a person, introduced another platform and now wants to integrate with the existing website. I could see this would be trouble when I first heard about it. I was not so technically concerned and the prototype I mentioned developed by one of the others is an okay solution, slow but okay.

  Anyway this totally back-fired and these people showed up at my desk every 30 minutes asking for stuff. At some point I mailed them and asked them to explain the problems they wanted solved instead of letting the describe the solutions - these people are new, they have no knowledge of what we can do and what infrastructure is in place, so they just make up sh*t and expect other to make it work - after some days they choose a complete workaround, so now they do not bother me so much anymore, but the solution is not good from a web site perspective and I still believe that this organization branch and introduction of new stuff is a bad idea, the online team should have had these assignment and some more people instead of introcing an extra platform which require different skills.

At the same time I am working on other projects in the startup phase and these are also taking time

I have attempted to deliver estimates and descriptions upfront, but somehow I got too involved in the architectural aspects, which is a problem since the online parts and very small. But in the project meetings people where discussing insignificant details so I have to do something, yes I journaled about this earlier, my plan is now to get out of those projects with my specifications in place so we can implement the stuff we want to and base this on something sane.

Man, I need a holiday soon...