Scope creep was rampant to a scale that I have not experienced since, and that’s saying something. I’ve had projects where I’ve been up for over 40 hours straight working because of scope creep, and I can assure that none of them fell anywhere near what I was supposed to do for this company. On top of that, every section had to have their own way of doing things, and I had to try and figure out how to fit it all together in one neat, little package.
Though the result is obvious already, I’ll press on. I swear I have a point to make with all of this.
I’d like to say that I worked as hard as I possibly could have, and that it all turned out great. I can’t, obviously, but I’d like to. Once the realization that the project could not possibly be done by someone with my abilities, i started to freak-out, which translated into slacking off. Like I stated previously, scope creep was everywhere, but it was not the only problem. The other major problem was a complete and utter fail at the effort estimates by both my employers and myself. Who knew that it took more than 4 months for anyone to make a CMS? Apparently we didn’t.
To add to this, I was younger, way less experienced, lazier, and my work ethic was roughly at the sub-par level. Throw in the fact that I had just started dating someone, and you get a bad collection of attributes to add to the already meaty mix of failure. I can admit to the fact that I did not work as had as I could have, and though that did contribute to the problem, even working at my best it was still a futile attempt. I’m not trying to lessen my blame or guilt here (I do feel it, believe me) I’m just explaining the situation.
Lets move forward in time to now. More specifically to last night. I was curious to see how they were doing. I logged onto the site in Firefox, and my eyes started to bleed. Then all of those repressed memories came flooding back, and I recalled how I just couldn’t get the damned thing to render in FF. Granted, FF was only in its 1.0 stage and had issues, but it all basically comes down to my lack of experience that lead to the horror that I was looking at. “My God, they’re using it,” I said to myself “they’re actually using it!” I looked around, and dear God they were still updating it too. So even after I did a piss-poor job with it all, they were actually using it.
It started eating me up inside. I couldn’t let that just sit there. I had the knowledge, the power, and the will to at least try and rectify the situation. I’ve gained so much experience over the last three years that I should be able to fix what I had done to the site in no time at all. I wouldn’t try making a CMS but damn it, I could fix that markup.
That’s when I realized how far I’d actually come since then. It’s only been three years (less, technically) and my experience is so much more superior to what it was then that my mind actually crapped itself a little. As I looked at that website, I realized I could remake the imagery and the markup in a couple days tops. It took me weeks back then. Even the way I did the CMS – such as it was – seems far simpler now then it ever did then. Hell, i remember spending days trying to figure out how the hell to do a recursive function to create the menu, as I hadn’t been taught them by this point. I eat recursive functions for breakfast now, though they all basically taste the same.
I’ll wait for the laughter to die down before I continue. If you didn’t laugh, you’re not a programmer or you don’t appreciate nerd humor. That’s your problem, not mine.
What I’m getting at here is that every once in a while you need to be reminded with just how far you’ve come. It’s sort of like looking at your grade 2 math homework, and laughing at how simple it is now. It’s like re-reading the first book you ever read, just to see how much easier it is now. Take a step back and look at what you do now. Look back a couple years and look at what you did then, and revel in how far you’ve come. Be proud of what you can do now, even if it doesn’t seem like enough for what you need to do.
You’ve got your goals, and that’s important. It’s also important to look at your progress to those goals to get that boost of confidence.
Oh, and for the record: I’m remaking the website imagery and markup, and I’m planning to email it to them. They can do with it what they wish, but at least I’ll feel better. As it turns out, I’m about a 3rd done, and it’s taken me about 3 hours of effort thus far. 3 hours versus multiple weeks.
I’m proud of what I can do now.
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