If you can go away from a failed/failing/broken project knowing that you did the best you could given the situation and your own personal experience, then it's not such a bad feeling. It's still definitly not enjoyable, frankly it's utterly horrible. But you can get through it, and you can learn from it, or even turn it around.
I've had two such experiences.
The first, I somehow managed to wind up as the effective leader of a half-life1 total-conversion project. Unfortunatly, it completly fell apart about 6 months later. A good part of the blame can be reseted on decisions I made, however I made a number of these decisions with bad information, and overoptimistic expectations (of a work-for-free team). It's not really an excuse, but all I'll say is that it wasn't entirly my fault
unfortunatly there were some absolute bastards in that project. However I feel I did my best all things considered and dammed if I didn't learn a thing or two. We had a hell of a lot of fun too while it lasted.
The other one was far more recent. And I feel the mistakes made were all not my fault, however had I been more assertive (not a natural thing for a new zealander working in the US to do) they wouldn't have occured, or prehaps could have been limited.
Basically, three fundamental choices nearly killed the project.
1) First was to skimp on hardware costs, ignore the machines I'd spec'd and get end-of-line dells (which were being retired due to overheating, for a project designed to run for 5 years). Next, slap them in kiosks with no ventilation what-so-ever (I managed to get some fans installed by bugging them, but no where near enough).
2) Next, get a cheap usb camera that is known to be unstable (which is the primary peice of hardware besides the PC) dispite my insistence on hgih quiality firewire cams since day 1.
3) Finally, when the project appears to be running on budget, decide a massive redesign is in order. In an 8 month project where the content was created first, seperated into 3 unique kiosks, scrap the one that is complete (code-wise), replace it with something totally new and unknown requiring all new content, and add extra content and code to the remaining two, while completly redesigning each of their interactions... And do all this 5 weeks before deadline. Ohh and take 2 weeks to aggree to a comprimise, in which time give no direction what-so-ever on how to proceed.
ohh, and pay really really badly too. Put me up in a student flat that has overflowing toilets, etc. Yeah. thanks guys.
At the end of the day, the project worked flawlessly for the press event and the first few days of demo'ing to utter nut-job fans, getting very good press coverage, and being occasionally shown as the 'stand-out' of the show on both TV and news papers. 1 month later it is so unstable it apparently won't run for more than an hour without needing a reboot. Great. Got their moneys worth I guess.
Unfortuantly it's a software-industry wide issue that managment just cannot get it through their head that spending money during development to avoid potential problems, and also listening to the developers with have *massive* benifits once the product is already out there, in the public eye. Especially when literally millions of people will use it like this perticular project.
And that exactly what got me through it. Sure I was working stupid hours, sure I was getting anxiety attacks at least weekly, sure I was sleeping terribly and feeling awful for a good portion, sure I was getting less than $1k/month (thats not even USD!), but at the end of the day, I made something that makes a hell of a lot of people happy and go 'wow', and I got to sortof-demo it to george lucas. So I end up more than satisfied.
Sorry don't want to sound arrogant but I'm quite proud of that little project dispite it's appauling managment.
I could have given up, and a number of times I very nearly did too.
My current work project probably won't be a huge success, but the guy I'm working for is a good friend so it's motivation to not short-change him. It's pretty much his dream to get his first product out there, and I'd feel crap if I made a hash of it, or did a half-arsed effort. Makes for quite a nice work stlye really.
I've had two such experiences.
The first, I somehow managed to wind up as the effective leader of a half-life1 total-conversion project. Unfortunatly, it completly fell apart about 6 months later. A good part of the blame can be reseted on decisions I made, however I made a number of these decisions with bad information, and overoptimistic expectations (of a work-for-free team). It's not really an excuse, but all I'll say is that it wasn't entirly my fault
unfortunatly there were some absolute bastards in that project. However I feel I did my best all things considered and dammed if I didn't learn a thing or two. We had a hell of a lot of fun too while it lasted.The other one was far more recent. And I feel the mistakes made were all not my fault, however had I been more assertive (not a natural thing for a new zealander working in the US to do) they wouldn't have occured, or prehaps could have been limited.
Basically, three fundamental choices nearly killed the project.
1) First was to skimp on hardware costs, ignore the machines I'd spec'd and get end-of-line dells (which were being retired due to overheating, for a project designed to run for 5 years). Next, slap them in kiosks with no ventilation what-so-ever (I managed to get some fans installed by bugging them, but no where near enough).
2) Next, get a cheap usb camera that is known to be unstable (which is the primary peice of hardware besides the PC) dispite my insistence on hgih quiality firewire cams since day 1.
3) Finally, when the project appears to be running on budget, decide a massive redesign is in order. In an 8 month project where the content was created first, seperated into 3 unique kiosks, scrap the one that is complete (code-wise), replace it with something totally new and unknown requiring all new content, and add extra content and code to the remaining two, while completly redesigning each of their interactions... And do all this 5 weeks before deadline. Ohh and take 2 weeks to aggree to a comprimise, in which time give no direction what-so-ever on how to proceed.
ohh, and pay really really badly too. Put me up in a student flat that has overflowing toilets, etc. Yeah. thanks guys.
At the end of the day, the project worked flawlessly for the press event and the first few days of demo'ing to utter nut-job fans, getting very good press coverage, and being occasionally shown as the 'stand-out' of the show on both TV and news papers. 1 month later it is so unstable it apparently won't run for more than an hour without needing a reboot. Great. Got their moneys worth I guess.
Unfortuantly it's a software-industry wide issue that managment just cannot get it through their head that spending money during development to avoid potential problems, and also listening to the developers with have *massive* benifits once the product is already out there, in the public eye. Especially when literally millions of people will use it like this perticular project.
And that exactly what got me through it. Sure I was working stupid hours, sure I was getting anxiety attacks at least weekly, sure I was sleeping terribly and feeling awful for a good portion, sure I was getting less than $1k/month (thats not even USD!), but at the end of the day, I made something that makes a hell of a lot of people happy and go 'wow', and I got to sortof-demo it to george lucas.
So I end up more than satisfied.Sorry don't want to sound arrogant but I'm quite proud of that little project
dispite it's appauling managment.I could have given up, and a number of times I very nearly did too.
My current work project probably won't be a huge success, but the guy I'm working for is a good friend so it's motivation to not short-change him. It's pretty much his dream to get his first product out there, and I'd feel crap if I made a hash of it, or did a half-arsed effort. Makes for quite a nice work stlye really.
