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[selenay]

I'm starting to worry (again) that my vacation may not happen. This time it's because the testing on Phase I is still going and I'm starting to doubt we'll be finished. I've fixed all the bugs that can be fixed but two are outstanding and they both cause huge, nasty errors.

Unfortunately, they both seem to be related to systems out of my control and we're struggling to replicate them properly in local systems where we can track things. The team in charge of the app have just found the source of one of these, but they don't know how to fix it without breaking everything else that runs through that app.

Argh.

So we can do new build tomorrow of the fixes that I've got sorted out, but there is a good chance that two critical bugs aren't going to be fixed any time soon so testing will not be approved.

We really need testing signed off by the end of the week if we're going to make our release date of October 5th. This is mainly because the team doing the acceptance testing are going to find endless objections to interfaces that we can't change and we will need to be able to explain that to them many times over and potentially argue with them.

If the release isn't approved to start on 5th October, due to the timing and complexity of it there is no way we'll get it done by the end of the week with time to check we haven't broken anything before the long weekend.

Thus the release will end up happening the following week, when I should be on vacation. Even if I thought there was a chance that I could document and provide contingency plans for every single damn error that can be committed during the release (seriously, deploying to test/UAT was a nightmare of deployment errors), I wouldn't be able to relax while I'm on my vacation. I'd be worrying about whether the release was going well and itching to log in and check.

Or I'd be getting phone calls to trouble-shoot the problems.

What I really want is to go home on Friday 7th October knowing that everything got deployed correctly and works as intended. Then I'll be able to relax. If that doesn't happen? I'll either need to cancel my vacation to supervise it personally or I'll spend the entire week worrying and not relaxing.

No, I'm not good at just forgetting about it. Nor am I good about delegation on something this complex and prone to issues. If the deployment team do everything correctly, in the right order, and deploy everything (not a few selected items, grrr) then it will be no problem. If the UAT environment matches production properly so that what works in UAT will work in prod, then it will be no problem.

I'm not holding my breath that either thing will happen.


We're supposed to have a work-outing to play golf on Friday afternoon. Leaving aside my panic at how much time that will take out of our work day, the forecast is for rain.

Um, no, I'm not spending my afternoon getting soaked. Not happening.

I started watching the first season of Downton Abbey last night. It's completely brilliant. If only there wasn't important rugby to watch this evening, I could mainline a few more episodes.

Comments

[fyrdrakken]

How problematical would it be to reschedule your vacation for a few weeks further down the road when hopefully the big release would finally be out of your hair? Are there tickets or reservations involved that would be expensive (or impossible) to change?

(This is the one big advantage of the way something like a third of our entire business for the year has a July 1st effective date: We know we're tied to the office during the mid-to-late summer, but for the rest of the year the only scheduling issue we're likely to have for vacation time is during major holidays when we need to at least have a skeleton crew on hand on the days the office itself isn't closed. Well, or the parents of school-aged children trying to get the week of their kids' spring break off.)

[selenay]

I don't have anything booked so rescheduling by a few weeks isn't an issue in that sense. I could (and will) do that if I have to.

The problem is that I'm exhausted, overwhelmed and approaching burn-out. I'm not sure that I'll cope if I don't get some down time soon. I booked the vacation before the release date was agreed (the original release date was today) and I'm slightly concerned that if I don't take it now, it will be next year before I have time for it.

I suspect that I'm developing some workaholic tendencies *sigh*

[gmul.livejournal.com]

Take a day off anyway. You need a break, they can live without you for a day and you'll be in the next day so you don't have to worry about dealing with worky stuff that day, it can wait and it'll still be there when you get back without having cause anything to slip more than it would have done anyway. Do it, you need it and they need you to be effective not a babbling husk of flail (or equivalent).

For bonus points, make your boss give you an extra day off for free for being a wonderful and dedicated person.

[selenay]

If this works out, I'm having a whole week off. That's why it's been a bit stressful and difficult - I can't leave things for a week if it all goes wrong at the last minute. I need a decent break, though.

No new bugs were found today and the tester has finished her test cases. We put a new build in ready for her to re-test tomorrow and we're hopeful that UAT will be done on Monday. Unless something new comes out of that, we should have the release signed off in time.

Keep your fingers crossed for me?

[fyrdrakken]

Here's hoping!