Well, the weekend is over and it’s back to work tomorrow, with the probably vain hope that we’ll actually get our hands on some hardware this week. Yes, we’re still without PCs and phones. As well as desks to put the PCs and phones on.
I honestly don’t think I’ve done this much handwriting since school. Okay, it could be a lot worse, given that it’s the early stages of the project and we’re doing a lot of preliminary design and analysis stuff. But there comes a time when you have to stop talking about building a computer system and actually start building it. And that time is fast approaching, along with the deadline for having the thing built, coming along not too far behind it.
But things haven’t reached desperation point yet. You’ll know I’m at desperation point when I actually start writing code on paper. When I start penciling HTML tags into my diary. And when a spare noticeboard becomes the project intranet, with documents pinned up and pieces of string tied between them as hyperlinks.
It’s all down to the wheels of big organisations moving very very slowly (if at all). Evidently it’s the desks that are the main problem – to be precise, where the desks will be. Once the desks have been allocated, the rest will apparently follow. The phones, the PCs, the network connections, all of that. They just don’t want to have to do it all again if we get moved.
But until someone signs the appropriate bit of paper in triplicate, no desks. We don’t have a place to live in the building. We’re homeless. We’re software development nomads, roaming the complex in search a home we can call our own.
If only we had a Moses. Someone to lead us. Someone to part the lift doors. Someone to get those desks, those PCs, someone to get that network connection. Someone to lead us to the promised LAN.
But in the mean time, it’s scrounging on borrowed PCs, our belongings in a waste paper basket, and meetings, endless meetings, in the bistro. Or maybe in the lift?
