That Whole ‘Megan’ Project Thing
Alright, let me tell you about this ‘Overtime Megan’ situation I went through. It wasn’t a person named Megan, that was just the nickname we gave the project because, well, it demanded everything from us. Started out looking like a walk in the park, honestly. Just needed to hook up a couple of existing systems. Should’ve been a few weeks, tops. That’s what they told us anyway.
So, we kicked things off. Got the initial requirements document, felt pretty standard. I mapped out the data flows, figured out the connection points. First week or two felt productive, like we were actually making progress. Then the little ‘extras’ started popping up. Small requests at first. ‘Could we just add a field here?’ ‘Maybe tweak this output format?’ Didn’t seem like much individually, but they started piling up quick.
When the Real Grind Started
That’s when the evenings started getting eaten up. Suddenly, the simple hook-up job turned into this monster needing custom logic, data transformations we never planned for, and compatibility fixes for ancient code nobody wanted to touch. We started calling it ‘Project Megan’ – always needing more attention, more time. Felt like we were constantly working, but never getting closer to the finish line.
I remember nights staring at the screen, debugging code that made no sense, fuelled by stale coffee. You’d fix one problem, run a test, and bam, three new errors appeared somewhere else. It was pure chaos sometimes. We tried everything:
- Holding quick stand-up meetings every few hours to sync up.
- Trying to build temporary workarounds just to show some progress.
- Going back to the requirements doc, highlighting the changes, trying to push back.
- Pulling in favors from guys in other departments who knew the old systems.
The worst part was the feeling that the goalposts were constantly shifting. What was critical yesterday was suddenly unimportant today, replaced by a new ‘urgent’ feature. It burned us out pretty bad. My routine became work, grab some quick food, work more, sleep, repeat. Forget weekends.
Hitting the Wall and Finding a Way
Things had to change. We were all exhausted and snapping at each other. The breaking point came during one particularly bad late-night session where a major part of the integration just fell apart. We basically hit a wall. The next morning, we called an emergency meeting. No more emails, no more vague requests. We needed the key decision-makers in one room.
We walked them through everything. Showed them the original plan, showed them the mountain of changes, showed them the dead ends we hit trying to make incompatible stuff work. We laid out the raw hours we were putting in. It wasn’t pretty, but it was honest. Took some serious guts, especially from our team lead, to basically say, ‘This isn’t working, and it won’t work unless we cut scope drastically.’ Surprisingly, after a lot of back and forth, they actually listened. We agreed on a stripped-down version – the absolute must-haves.
Finishing ‘Megan’ and Lessons Learned
Once we had that revised, realistic scope, things actually started moving. Still wasn’t easy, still had some long days to clean up the mess and build the core functions properly, but at least we knew what we were building. We focused like lasers on that core list, ignoring everything else.
We finally launched ‘Project Megan’. It did the basic job it was supposed to do from the start. No bells, no whistles, just the core connection. The relief was huge, but man, we were drained. That whole period was a brutal reminder of what happens when projects aren’t managed well.
Looking back, that ‘overtimemegan’ taught me a few things. You gotta be loud about scope creep early on, don’t let it snowball. Document every single change request and its impact. And sometimes, you have to force the uncomfortable conversations to reset expectations. It was tough, but you learn more from the rough projects than the smooth ones, right?
