This was supposed to be the week where my team finally got control of the situation at “The Client Who Shall Rename Nameless”; instead, after a weekend of two 18-hour days we’re slightly behind where I’d hoped we’d be, and, even worse, encountering new issues that are only going to slow us down further this coming week.

Some of this, to be brutally honest, was self-inflicted – one of the India guys wasn’t paying sufficient attention and really screwed up (hence, the long weekend hours). But the client helped put us in the situation where we are, so there is plenty of blame to toss around on both sides.

We’re 4 1/2 months into this implementation and I wish there were an end in sight. I thought this past week was the week that was finally going to put us on the road to that light, yet, here we are, in some ways closer, in other ways further away. Because every step we take towards bring this engagement to a close only results in us discovering yet another issue. It’s pretty disheartening.

Were I the client (who, of course, shall remain nameless), I’d have told my company to shut the whole damned thing down a month ago. And I wouldn’t have blamed them in the least – our solution doesn’t scale and there are way too many moving parts and points of failure, and my team, while talented and enthusiastic, is young and prone to mistakes if you’re not bird-dogging them at every moment. And it’s not as if this project is the only one on our collective plates.

Didn’t hit balls this weekend. Never got to attending to the pool, which needs a serious backwash. Never got to blogging except for this minor blurb. At this stage I’ll either be ground down to a pulp or fired. That’s like having to choose between Billy Joel and Huey Lewis and the News. My boss had to intervene between me and one of our executive VPs last week, so the latter isn’t out of the question. Everyone in the project is tired, worn out, sick of each other, and desperate for any light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t an oncoming train.

This sucks.