Launch post

One reason why I haven't spent any time on this blog is because I've been working pretty much flat-out without an extended break at home for many months on end,

Since the Summer my production management skills have been put to the greater good, building a brand new financial capability website for the UK armed services.

A few weeks back we made the decision to put back the launch (which had already been delayed a couple of times nefore I even joined the project team.

Now, I know there are launches, and there are launches. This is the latter - without saying too much about it our hard launch will be awash with very senior military people, government ministers, maybe even the odd Olympic gold-winning celebrity.
 
Now I know it's always frustrating when launch dates shift. If you're working on the customer side it messes up your plans to move on to other projects, and if you're a hired hand you might have been lining up your next contract or planning a holiday and now have to re-plan everything.

And an inevitability of delay is that you'll have to live through the original launch day, perhaps thinking 'hmm, we were supposed to be going live right about now'.

But I will say this:

In my 15 years in the digital industry I've worked on many projects where the launch day changed and never once has there been a time where we've spent that day - the ex-launch day if you will - sitting on our hands wistfully thinking 'I wish we hadn't delayed the launch because we're ready to go now!'.

By contrast, the prevailent emotion is usually one of relief. 'Man, imagine what it would have been like if we'd stuck to the original launch. We'd have been working through the night! The enhancements to the css to improve the display on mobile wouldn't have been ready. Those changes we made to improve the IA would never have happened!' And so on.

So, frustrating though it is when we have to put launches back a few weeks, it almost always feels like it was exactly the right decision to make.

And right decisions are good!