Some performance problem popped up in our production environment. A bunch of us developers got together and sketched out possible solutions. We brought in some DBAs and came up with an optimal approach. After this initial huddle, a manager and developer went off to research the solution further.
This weekend I got the notice that I needed to implement the solution ASAP. Then I was asked for an estimate on how long it would take to knock this out. I used my trusty estimator spreadsheet. I have found it to work pretty well. Since we already designed a solution, I cut out the design hours.
On day one, I tried to manually check out the solution. Oooops. The SQL would not compile. I spent a day struggling with it. I called in a bunch of managers, developers, and DBAs. At first nobody else could get the design to work. Eventually a DBA and developer came up with a related desgn that would work. Problem was that now I was a day behind schedule.
