Screeching Halt
At 5 pm on Friday, all was well and I was on schedule to complete all of my projects on time. At 5 pm on today, everything was lost. The database migration hit a snag and now nobody has the confidence in the Oracle 10g RAC platform. At least not enough confidence to bet our jobs and put the production environment on it in 12 days. This is a very bad thing for all of us but especially me since I'm the scapegoat project manager. Seriously, the outcome won't be good. If I'm not fired, I will lose respect for executive management. It's not that I did something wrong per se but I just didn't make it happen which is what I'm paid to do. I can still sleep tonight though because I did the right thing and pulled the plug on the project.
My other two projects, a phone system migration and a new internet peer blew up in spectacular fashion due to screw ups on the part of the vendors. Again, I'm paid to manage the vendors and make these things happen so it's 100% my fault.
Sure, projects are always late and over budget but I'm 0/5 so far and none of them have been close to coming out right. To make matters worse, my documentation is sparse or non-existent but this is mostly due to fighting fires. Instead of being proactive, I'm forced to be reactive. I have this little joke that I mumble all the time: :I can't wait to become a project manager!"
It's going to be an interesting August.
