Vindicated!

Some days, I get to say HA! I was RIGHT!

Today it happened three times.

1) In Cleveland, I had made a strategic structural recommendation over 4 weeks ago that was roundly rejected by the powers that be, who claimed I simply didn't understand how things worked at this site, and that I'd need to revisit all of my assumptions before bringing that sort of recommendation forward.

Today, I got backup from the vendor AND two other teams that my recommendation was the best way to move forward. HA!

2) Again in Cleveland, 3 weeks ago I made a comment in a meeting that two projects (owned by different sponsors) seemed to have some similar end goals, and that perhaps we should consolidate the teams to get both projects done faster and build on the experience. I was cautioned after the meeting that I had raised a highly political issue, that's not how we do things here, and that I was thin ice with making statements like that. I was encouraged to cool it.

Today, the owner of one of the two projects (who was in the meeting 3 weeks back) delivered the SAME OBSERVATION as her own, and it was taken as a reasonable move-forward strategy.

Do I seek credit? No. I don't seek credit. I just know I was right. HA!

3) In 2008 I made a series of presentations in which I proposed that for 98% of uses, there's no need to build a data warehouse, that data could be queried and joined in a just-in-time basis, creating a virtual warehouse on demand. I drew up designs on how it would work, and how it would essentially save on disk space and create a more nimble environment for end-users. I got pushback from people saying "it'll never be fast enough", and in a sad moment for me, I saw a project I designed in Tacoma get transferred to the Database Team, who never entertained my Virtual concept and went ahead with a traditional data warehouse project.

Today I spoke with a company that actually makes this concept work, and they have it installed at 100 clients. I can't say I knew of them back then, but they must have existed. So while I don't take credit for making it happen, I take credit for proposing the possibility (which was actually possible):

HA!

Some days, it just feels good to know your ideas were right, even if it took the world a little while to catch up.