And so....

My project got delayed, which was simultaneously a bit of a bummer and a bit of a relief. I can say without doubt that from the point I had entered the project 2 months ago, we had really turned that ship around and rebuilt confidence in my team. I did what I was brought in to do: Keep everyone from quitting, and get us somehow across the finish line. I got us there.

But there are other teams than mine, and not all of them were QUITE as ready to go. Notably the hospital billing team, who were having a hard time proving that they were 100% sure whether all of the charges were ready to go to the right buckets. They weren't helped at all by a database tool they had built to track their testing progress that seemed to actually EAT their results on a regular basis. Every single status report included some variant on "well, this isn't QUITE right because the database..." This tool was supposed to help them, but became their downfall.

I'm not sure exactly WHEN we will go live: Option 1 is a mere 3 week delay, which again is fine for MY team, but may not be enough to solve the other issues. Option 2 is to go live the day I take the family to Disneyworld. I already told them: If that's the date you pick, I will be happy to get you right up to golive, then swoop in during week two with a fresh set of eyes. There is no version of that story in which I cancel our trip to Disney, FYI.

So it's all very exciting. I was at a gala this weekend and ran into a physician who was grateful for the delay: He is transferring to another hospital and this delay means he doesn't need to touch this new system before he's safely at a new site.

It's just work...