Monday, January 15, 2024

I accidentally ended up being too helpful at work and it’s backfired.

I’ve been lumped with a load of work that never seems to end, without the authority to actually make any decisions about it. Happy days.

The work in question is the configuration of a complicated web app (A validation lifecycle management system).

Four things are making it difficult:

• the system is maddeningly complicated and bizarre
• the system and its configuration is poorly documented
• the configuration file is an Excel workbook
• our computer system validation process, which is being computerised, poorly defined and muddled.

The folk who will be the primary users of this system were really struggling with it and making next to no progress on it, so I decided to help out. Sure enough, now it’s become my responsibility to make any progress at all.

I can’t wait to put it behind me. Of course, the original deadline was December 2023.

It’s often amusing watching people try and define their processes within the restrictions of an existing system. It really does often highlight that the process is largely bollocks and that they are mostly winging it.

I’d suspected as much of this particular process, so it’s nice to have it confirmed at least.