This massive Project Pittsburgh was the impetus for an equally massive reorganization in our area at work. Because of my decision to work on this new component, I got reorg’ed out of my current first and second line managers to an entirely new management chain in a department associated with Build, Install, Upgrade, and Migration for Project Pittsburgh.
This early days of a project are an exiting time in the life of a project. New software architectures and designs for CNC got crafted by yours truly. Everybody is worried about CNC, so I get the chance to present these multiple times through March and April to all sorts of important people (Lead Designers, management up through my Third Line, critical internal stakeholders and internal customers). Eventually, we got the Architecture/Designs refined to where everybody is comfortable with them. Then it is time to develop all the stories, sizings and plan spins for the Project Plan for the CNC. This is all necessary and fundamental work (the blocking and tackling, I like to call it), but not the most enjoyable activities of the job.
By mid April, we get to the good part – actually developing and testing the software for CNC. New Scrum Team is formed with me as the Scrum Master. Team is composed of many new folks that I have never worked with before. Remember that Project Pittsburgh is this convergence of my product and two other products. This is usually a fun experience, working with new folks, as well as re-engaging with old buds from past projects. My team got off to a real good start, hitting all the Sprint commitments with no story debt and trying (and in many cases, succeeding) in doing Agile the right way.
But by May, clouds are forming in the background. Project Pittsburgh isn’t fitting real well - in terms of the functions that can be shipped and target date for the shipment. So, in parallel while we are actually developing Project Pittsburgh including my little CNC portion of it, many macro-level plan spins are initiated by TPTB. These are “what if” exercises, like “What if we remove functions A, B, and C from The Plan? Can we ship then by the target date? Does this still represent a successful combination of functionality that customers will buy?”
As fate would have it, one of these What If exercises results in a plan change that drops a nuclear bomb on my CNC and my Scrum Team. As a result of this plan change, my CNC is no longer needed (in this release of Pittsburgh anyways). So, just like that, work on CNC is stopped and my Scrum Team is disbanded. The team is disbursed to other Project Pittsburgh Scrum Teams (like the kind of fire sales which small market MLB teams will hold at the end of the trading deadlines in July).
Nothing like driving 100 MPH in one direction on a Thursday and then finding out on a Friday that the course has been changed. Fortunately, they told us all on the Friday before Memorial Day. Needless to say, didn’t work much overtime that weekend.
