v27.8: A Week of Testing

Good morning folks,

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We are in the final week of testing for the project I have been leading since February.  This was a huge undertaking for me and a massive learning curve but things are starting to look like they may fall together quite nicely.

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I started on this team with no prior knowledge of Project Management or Development Life Cycles.  A quick Google search on either topic will yield many results and tons of information to read over and digest.  Of course these are things people in my position already know ahead of time and have done it at least once or twice.  Without giving too much away and violating some agreement I'm sure I signed when I joined 4 years ago; this project  is a Web-based portal system allowing users to quickly and easily create service requests and have approvals automated and form fields validated.

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You see, the current system doesn't do this.  It will allow any old value in any field and when you submit it, someone on the other side needs to validate all the data is correct and then hunt down the people needed to approve the request.  Our new system will validate everything in-line as you're typing (you've probably seen web forms like this already) and if the request requires an approval, the system will look those people up, notify them of a pending approval and wait for that approval to come in.  Once approved, the system will THEN generate a ticket so when a real live person first looks at it, the ticket will only contain a fully validated and approved request for them to execute.  Slick huh?

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Of course the client is doing cartwheels over this one.  The project is so slick that my client manager has been selling it to every business group in the organization.  I don't mind the exposure, I just wish we were ready for it.  You see I'm leaving out a big piece of this story; they only gave us 6 weeks to build all this from scratch and roll out as an Enterprise class production application.  Normally (or so I'm told) a project of this scale typically takes at least 6 months.

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Normally I like a challenge but this project has been so challenging it has driven me to the bottle.  Of course it didn't take much to drive me to the bottle, I like to always keep a bottle of rum in my freezer in the off chance my mother drops by for a visit (hint).  I've been stressed beyond my normal levels and to make mattes a bit worse I've been exercising in the early morning hours which is taking away from the precious sleeping time I so need right now.  It got so bad in the middle that we had to put our P90X on hold until things calm down.  We're still eating healthy, but the exercise routine has died down a bit until this project is completed and the transition at work is over.  The transition is due to be complete in a couple more weeks and this project is going production next Monday.  This is my final week of testing.

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So, I thought it would be a fun idea to test you all!  I have been writing this blog for many years now so there is a TON of information here for those looking to do a little reading.  I've had good days, I've had bad days and there is a good chance I've written all about them.  I'm going to quiz you every day this week and ask you to look up some of my previous posts and answer my questions in your comments.  Sound fun?

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My first question is an easy one and should be fairly easy to find if you know where to look.  What is the date of my very first post?  I plan on keeping score and on Friday I will announce the winner.

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With that, I must bid you all farewell for now.  I have a lot of work to do this week and this application isn't going to test itself.  I look forward to seeing if anyone gets this answer right.  Remember, it is my first post (hint: not my first musing).

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Cheers,

Al