You know those movie scenes where the boss tells the hero, “I need you in Florida in three days”? And then the hero puts the rest of his life on hold and jumps on a plane to Florida?
Yeah, I’ve always wondered if that happens in real life at all.
Last week my boss told me, I need you in Florida on Monday. I put the rest of my life on hold and jumped on a plane to Florida.
It helps to have a corporate travel office to that has the weight of the company and it’s very extensive travel budget to make it all happen. But, still, I’m the one who did the “spur of the moment travel piece.
We have a project. It’s not going so well. I sometimes feel like Miracle Max,
Don’t rush a miracle man, sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
This project is beyond rushed. We have a great team, but we pretty much needed Tom Cruises tech team from Mission Impossible, to pull off our schedule. Any hitch in our giddiyup and we put the release dates at risk.
I worked for Microsoft for nearly a decade. I’ve seen hundreds of release dates come and go. In fact, there was a trick to release dates. Projects typically went for nine months to a year. Teams devoted their lives to the project. They put everything else on hold.
When a project shipped, it was common to have a big party and then everyone would go on vacation. The new program managers would schedule their vacation for a week or two after the ship date. The experienced program managers would schedule their vacation for the week of the project ship date. . .because we always shipped late. The project would then interfere with the new PMs vacation plans.
Anyway, this is not that kind of ship date. We can’t just delay. The start of the project kicks off a months long schedule.
That brings me back to Florida. . .literally. We had to get our computers ready for a critical client check on Tuesday night. That meant I had to fly to Florida to make sure that our computers were ready for the test.
I have the mission. I chose to accept it. Now we just have to execute on it.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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