Last episode, we realized that we were being sold something that was not what we thought it was. After that shocking realization, we sat down to figure out exactly what it was that we did buy...
More weeks had passed. Our original "Launch" date was a distant memory from months ago, and we hadn't even bothered to set a new one yet. There were simply too many outstanding issues. Our list of 20 critical issues had grown to over 40, shrunk back to 20, and gradually started to grow again as we desperately tried everything to whip this monstrosity into shape for launch. Even as we agonizingly scraped our way past each problem, however, me, $Boss, $BigBoss, and our coworkers started asking questions--hard questions.
We didn't get any answers.
The people who had proposed the project originally were afraid of cancelling it. They'd stuck their necks out to get us a product that looked like a really good piece of software at the time. People who pushed so hard for failed projects tended to disappear from their jobs sooner or later around here, often not under their own terms. They just couldn't back down now. This project had to be a success.
Finally, one day, we got confirmation of our worst fears. We had been on a conference call for 2 hours with $VFH4 (another episode, another new account rep) and a higher-up executive from $VFH (let's call him $HUE; he was a regular in calls these days), and everyone was tired. Tired of the project, tired of each other, tired of staring down uncooperative software, tired of listening to all the background noise inherent to a 15-person conference call. $Boss hadn't had much to say during this particular meeting, so she'd muted the receiver on her phone so she could type some emails without disturbing the conference, while still listening in.
This paid unexpected dividends in our "search for what's going wrong" after the conference ended. Everyone disconnected except $VFH4 and $CST--and unknown to them, $Boss, who was still on mute, busy typing an email. She didn't even realize the conference was over until $VFH4 and $HUE started talking shop with each other.
$VFH4: "Man, we need to tell the Cloud Services Team to get their act together. This is ridiculous, every one of these remaining issues has been on their list for the better part of a month. Why can't we get these problems solved?"
$HUE: "Well, it's a new version of the product. We just moved the product to the cloud, after all--you have to expect a few bumps in the road here and there. Do your best, and I'll make sure the Cloud Services Team stays on task and gets these people taken care of. They're our top priority until they launch; we have to have a win here at the start if we're going to get everyone moved over to the cloud version!"
$Boss, internally: Well, it nice of their executives to say that we're their top priority! Maybe we'll finally be able to move-
She froze.
$Boss, internally: Wait. Wait a minute. Did... did $HUE just say that they just moved their product to the cloud, and that we're basically their first client to run on the cloud software?
$VFH had hundreds of clients, but by sheer happenstance we bought the product exactly as they were about to start promoting the cloud version of it.
At this point, very little surprised us anymore when it came to $VFH; if their software had suddenly grown long ears and begun jumping rapidly back and forth across the screen while saying "Eh, what's up Doc?" and eating a healthy diet of carrots directly out of the user's refrigerator, it would probably have been simply noted down as a bug and included in the next conference call. Not a critical bug, mind you. The remaining bugs were far more debilitating and considerably less amusing. Exhaustion had set in, both we and $VFH were all just doing out best to get this... thing... out the door, regardless of what it was.
That being said, the next time I saw $Boss a day or two later she looked like she could have been knocked over by a stiff breeze.
$Me: "What's up, $Boss? You look like you've seen a ghost!"
$Boss: "I just learned everything. All of the gory details. I talked to $BigBoss about what I overheard. We've been asking around their other clients for more details, and we finally got enough information to call $VFH on their nonsense. You'll... want to sit down for this."
For being spread across 3 rooms on 2 floors, my coworkers have an uncanny ability to show up downstairs in our breakroom when revelations are about to be made. I'm pretty sure it's some form of collective superpower.
To start from the beginning of the saga:
$VFH had sold us a copy of their very successful, highly-reviewed product. Their salespeople had done their jobs accurately and successfully, so far as they knew. However, when their implementation team started looking at our timeline for setting up their software, they rapidly realized that we bought it less than a year before they were planning to move everyone over to the cloud-based version of the $VFH product, which they hadn't yet launched anyone on yet.
They didn't have the time or manpower to train and launch us on the old version for their normal 26 weeks (13 per admissions team), while simultaneously finishing up and launching their new product, and then retrain us for another 26 weeks on the new product, which was quite different and had a radically different setup process. By the time they finished all of that, they would be very nearly up against the cutover date for their new cloud product. Plus, they'd already sold us a product with the assurance that it would be done along a specific timeline.
Cue a panicked scramble on the part of their leadership. They eventually decided that their best course of action was to say nothing and work really, really hard to get their software done, and hope that everything went smoothly.
As you may have guessed by now, things did not go smoothly.
The training duration was just standard procedure for them, but they decided to use the time to finish development of their product as quickly as possible. They had one other client that had purchased their software a month before we did, and seemed to be getting along acceptably. They gave us the contact information for this client to ask for any possible help and guidelines based on how they had the software set up.
As it turns out, this client was... dissatisfied, to say the least. They were being bombarded with problems; they just had no choice but to move forward on an even more aggressive timetable than we had. They'd encountered the same slowness issue that we did, they were using custom-developed parts on their public website to work around the same host of shortcomings on $VFH's software that we found, and their advice was basically to do as little as possible on the $VFH cloud software and as much as possible on a system that actually worked.
Our original launch date was in mid-spring. It's now getting towards the end of summer, and there's no launch in sight. The critical issues list remains at least 20 items long, and the pain shows no sign of ending any time soon.
We've pretty much caught up to the end of July, so that's where this story will have to come to a conclusion--for now. I've left out plenty of utterly nonsensical, frustrating, and otherwise rage-inducing details, which I'll probably post as individual stories here and there as a continuation of this series. However, as we left it in our last meeting, we're looking at getting $VFH to compensate us for lost time, at the very least.
One of our admissions teams is up against a hard deadline--if they don't launch $VFH's software next week, they won't have another window to launch until September. The other appears to be progressing more smoothly, but is also encountering many of the same bugs. They're also being led by a manager that's less aware of tech issues in general, and are likely to not see potential oncoming trainwrecks. Both of our admissions teams have a hard deadline of late November. If it doesn't launch by then, we have to renew our contract with our old vendor to avoid service interruption, and the whole deal's off--we certainly can't afford to pay both of them and only use one.
So here ends this thread of the sordid tale. I've omitted a ton of detail, and believe me there was plenty more mistakes on everyone's parts (including my own). During the most intense part of this project I spent at most a quarter of my work week on it, but it's contributed by far the most to my stress levels. All this from a project I didn't even know was going to exist prior to January.
Submitted July 29, 2017 at 09:40AM by Strycken1 http://ift.tt/2tQXDrg talesfromtechsupport
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