At the start of our development cycle we negotiated which new features would be added to next year's software suite. A schedule was made to develop these features. Somewhere in the middle of development our customer decided to add 3 new major features. Since they were ready to pay us more money, these additions were accepted and added to the schedule.Now we are at the point where we are supposed to deliver the first additional change to testing. Surprise. The software is not ready. The delay is not entirely due to the late addition of the feature, but mainly because it took a long time to agree upon the requirements and design. Apparently a lot is riding on this first delivery. The customer community at large is using this delivery as a milestone to determine the confidence they have in development.
Some of the comedy in this situation is that I heard even the week before the delivery there was new customer talk as to how the software should work. Luckily I have little to do with the first major feature. Those guys doing that development are putting in the overtime. At least they are getting paid extra.
Another funny thing about the situation is that you need to cut corners when you are behind. Instead of putting a spreadsheet control in the application, they are just launching Microsoft Excel. Sounds like a valid shortcut. But for a while there were even some problems doing this programmatically. There was some weird green triangle showing up in the Excel title bar. I don't much of the detail behind this because I am trying to stay out of it. There is just something hilarious about the whole ordeal.
