Out of Breath

There were two software deliveries last week, and it would have been three except that one of the managers let us push his delivery to this week instead. That's a total of six separate software applications, nine documents (version descriptions and user manuals and the like) that had to be written/updated, edited, and reviewed, four sets of change request paperwork, and since one of those deliveries was for an initial release, one full-blown configuration audit to perform. In the space of five days.

The good news is that -- for a change -- three of the software apps were already done and tested when we started working on the deliveries, and most of the documents were pretty straightforward (and the ones that weren't, had actually been in-work for a month beforehand).

But it was still a huge pile of stuff to do and an incredible amount of work and I'd been looking forward to today as a slower-paced breather after the incredible sprint of the last few days.

But then yesterday our document specialist's husband wound up in ICU, and it looks like he's going to be there for a while. She's working from home some, between trips to the hospital, but while she's definitely the kind of person who would rather have something to work on than just sit and idly worry, there's a limit to how much we can really ask her to do.

Which means the normal, "breather" pace, currently calling for three documents to be ready to deliver tomorrow and two more on Friday, is going to get tight again, because I'm going to end up doing probably half of them myself, and the ones she's doing, I'm going to have to go over more closely than usual since (entirely understandably!) I doubt she's going to be able to focus as well as usual.

Plus my paperwork inbox is literally overflowing with all the administrative crap that has to be done after deliveries. Whee. At least I won't have to worry about being bored at work for the rest of the week.

And if you can, spare a thought or a prayer for the doc specialist, her husband, and their son.