Hey, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want
to talk a little bit more about dealing with stress in projects!
All right! So today I want to talk a little bit more about what I was talking
about yesterday, which was dealing with stress. So yesterday I was answering a
question by Jamel about dealing with stress while
coding, and I was talking about just the day-to-day stress, you know, 'I got a bug', 'I
got a deadline' - just getting through that and sometimes it just
helps to get away from the code and everything like that. Now I mentioned
that doing some exercise helps, from time to time. Then afterwards I was
thinking, I should tell you about the time I have been the most stressed in a
project - probably in my entire life actually. It's one of my first
client projects, and I'm gonna tell you this, and I just want to preface this
with the fact that I've learned a lot since then, so don't judge me.
But some of you guys might be going through some of these problems and I
thought I'll share it with you, I'll be transparent, all that kind of stuff, so
you can just see. You know, it was a learning experience - I mean
it was a learning experience of learning experiences though! So this was
one of my first clients and I'd worked with a few clients before this,
and we did like small projects, where we did working for individuals
and they were happy with everything. But this was my first big
client. It was a like a large company, it was a lot of exposure.
Tthis was it, this was like, Overpass! I'll just be able to drop this
name of this client for future companies, and we're just gonna get lots
of business afterwards, right. So, I did a
few projects with developers overseas, I've done a lot of projects with developers
overseas before, but this was the first time with some new people,
and it was the first time really where Overpass was footing the entire bill, you
know, hiring a few different people. So I had a really good designer from the
Philippines, he was I very talented - I won't say really good because he was
not very disciplined, and a developer who seemed to be very honest at the time.
So he'd worked on a few projects with me, seemed to be a bit slow, but I
thought fairly honest or whatever. but we'll see.
So basically, I got a call from - I'm not gonna tell you who the client was because
I never really talk about my clients. So they had this
tradeshow event and they wanted a game for it. So
I met with them and we we talked about different game concepts, and we'd
settle on an idea, I'd sketched out some designs, they were really happy about it.
I went to the designer and he sketched out some designs and they were, I mean
they were excellent designs, they really looked good! I mean, that was
what separated us from all the others because it just looked so
professional. And the developer had
gone away, so we came up with the concept, he's gone away and started coding on
some stuff, and I wasn't really checking on the code every
day. I wasn't demanding that I see it, I was just like "How much longer
are we gonna be on this?" "I think another couple days, I think another
couple days, I think another couple days". Right. And then at some
point, the designer disappeared. He just went off the grid so he's as a guy
in the Philippines - he's not the designer I'm working with now. I work Sandee.
I've been working with Sandy now for four years and one of the reasons I hired her
was because of this guy. So, he went missing for like two weeks,
so everything stopped in the project. The developer was still, you know,
he'd started saying he needed the image assets, but I hadn't seen any code from
him yet. So, it was getting to the point where I was really nervous because
at this point, I was giving them really quick updates " How about this image? How about
this image? How about this image?", everything like that.
But I didn't really have any code to give them because we didn't really
have anything yet because, for whatever reason, and I should have been more on
top of it, you know, in the end I should have been more on top of it. So we got to
the point where the event was very close, I mean it was like a few weeks
away! This is when I started hearing the thing that no business owner ever
wants to hear is "Eric, I just want to say that I'm a bit concerned and
we're a bit concerned over here because we haven't seen any progress on this
project". And I tried to reassure them, "I understand, we're we're working as
hard as we can", all this kind of stuff. Meanwhile I can't even get in touch with
the designer, I had no idea where he was. So, I hired a new designer and she
started - that was Sandee and she started working on some other stuff, and she
started filling in all the gaps and all of a sudden we started to make some some
headway. She was gonna be temporary, but in the end she's still with me four
years later. Then this other designer pops up off the grid from somewhere, and
they had a few changes to the images and he completely changed them
way too far the other side and it became really, really difficult to do.
Then finally the developer checks in his code and it was like,
there was no way he could have spent an entire month doing what he had done. I
mean, there are people who are slow, and then there's just dishonest
slow. Like, even someone who had learned the language
yesterday could have done better. And I can remember sitting in the front room
and my stress levels were growing day by day by day, you know,
just snapping at people and everything like that, I'm not proud of it.
And then I remember sitting there in the front room,
it was like a Sunday night and I just thought "god, it's a train wreck! We've
got like a week to do this, nothing's done." And I wanted the model to
work. This was a big thing. I wanted the model to work. I didn't want to be the
solo pianist anymore. I wanted to be the conductor. I wanted to be able to move
above the coding side and have all that work. And I sat there and I was stressed
out, I was snapping at people, and once I sat down and then I started to feel
sorry for myself! I started to go "god, what was I even thinking,
I don't know what's gonna happen. I've been
disappointing hundreds of people, like, everybody's waiting on this
thing, and the event is two weeks away and
everything. And nothing's gonna happen you know, there's they're still hoping
that I'll give them a pill the next day". And I thought "god, just no".
I sat there and I just thinking: "What was I thinking?! Who am I to do this?!
I'm not a project manager, I'm a developer", and all this. And I was just
really, really feeling low. Then like my kids, so when I say about
exercise, my kids were playing around with these dumbbells that I had
around the house, because I I got on this thing where I thought I would work out
more often at the time, but I wasn't. So they were saying
"Hey Dad, can we play with these? And they were doing "uugh!"
you know, and yeah and I was like no, let me show you how that's
done and everything, and I started doing it and you know, as I started just
doing exercising, and I did some push-ups all this stuff, and all of a sudden, I
started to feel a little bit better! I know that sounds really corny but I
started to feel a little bit better. I started to feel like "okay, take
charge." That developer he was gone.
I pulled a few all-nighters and I coded that entire thing.
Weeks, which he had six weeks to do, I coded it in a few days. I turned
it around they were super happy with it. They
probably still don't know to this day how close it was to not ever getting
done. We got the design assets in, you know, where they ask for a few
changes. We turned those around. The nice thing
about having an event to shoot for and the deadline, like I said before, is that
scope creep stops at some point because everybody's vested interest is in
finishing the thing. And I finally got through with it but that wa
early on, and I learned a lot from that. First of all, I will never put
myself in a tight framework like that with a new developer. I always try out
developers on my own projects first before I put them on anything that's
client-related. If I find a designer that I like and that I can
trust I'm gonna keep them forever. Hey Sandee! Like I said, she's been with me
for four years. I guess I just won't blindly trust anyone,
and I'm really deadly serious about having source code control and being
able to check code on a regular basis to check on progress. It's just, these
kind of things learn and I was naive at the time. But let me
tell you what - that was a low point! And I get stressed all the time -
projects, we always get stressed, get deadlines, everything. But having
gone through that, everything else is easy. So my question to you is, 'let me
know in the comments if you've had these kind of situations where you just
think it's the end of the world, a train wreck. Because I remember sitting
there thinking that if Armageddon's gonna happen, now's gonna be a good
time because then at least I don't have to
to call them and tell them it's not gonna be done.
I was thinking that maybe I could get in a car accident, that would
be so lucky. That's really, really, really low. So
let me know if you've been in a situation like that working with clients!
Anyway, that's it for today I'll talk to you guys tomorrow!