ENGInE

It doesn't get any better than this

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:15:00 +0000

OK, we've been running this ENGInE malarky now for over a year. I'd like to say it's been plain sailing, a bed of roses, a piece of cake, but if I did I would be lying.

We've launched all markets.....woohoo! We converted some South Americans, Romania is on the horizon and Turkey is expressing an interest.

Actually on that last point I'm a bit miffed. The lovely people from Turkey are flying over to talk turkey with us about ENGInE. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them on the Monday/Tuesday that they're in the UK. They are coming over on a Tuesday, arriving at 1:00pm. I leave on Tuesdays at 2:30pm. I have one and a half hours to "sell" ENGInE. I mean I know I'm good (all modesty aside) but 90 minutes is simply inadequate.

We're launching a few new sites within Europe before the end of the year too.

The problem I have is that I'm not satisfied with the site. I want to change this, that and the other but I have no budget. This is beyond frustrating. And the problem with work-related frustration is that it's the prime cause of work-related stress.

Maybe I need a dose of flu.

Some classic authoring by the Greek team (Michael)

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:44:00 +0000

I hate to do this to Michael because he is the loveliest of people with whom to work, and I know this will be fixed but....a classic authoring issue:

F*** it, I'll get a tray

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:26:00 +0000

The catch phrase for the project, together with "Do you have a flag?"

The nominations

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:12:00 +0000

Me for removing her network cable earlier in the day to work while my PC was renewed. Later Outlook and IE are not working. Tim asks if I have plugged in the network cable, which of course I hadn't. And previously for for stopping Firefly's deletion of the Irish database after the ENGInE launch with the reason that we still need it for the Dealer Websites (i.e. NONAV).

Tristan "Hightower" Knapp, who enjoyed the most comprehensive training of all when joining the club and who always managed to be in the office just-in-time for lunch, for making all FatWire "dementors" disappear by pretending that he understands 3 of the 4 levels of caching, for logging dependencies, where there are none and for his undoubtedly expert knowledge of Bundesliga soccer (although he still keeps putting the ball under the arm and starts running).

Lebas Ludovic and the rest of the FatWire team for mystifying the intuitive, confusing the obvious, concealing the apparent and for four wonderful levels of caching, which we still don’t understand, but impresses us immensely! And no, we still don’t understand the difference between a bug and a limitation.

Christian “who loves you babe, where is my lollipop Kojak” Hausen and Alex “Obelix” M. for proving that "remote access" actually can make employees such as Reiner more productive, especially when exploiting that Window-L hack.

Gerda-Marie "Trinity" for her incredible talent in creating worms, viruses and other very nasty softlets (new buzz word) on development which crash servers intermittently, unexpectedly and mercilessly, confusing other developers, while looking innocuously throughout the room saying “Siggi we have a session issue on Prod Management”. And also for deleting the wrong site and actually deleting the mothersite.

Alex “Boom-Boom” Seyder for secretly setting his layouts and wrappers to cached and un-cached on various environments, rewriting urls and redirecting us to places we no man has gone before. A true trekkie.

Guillaume, "I think we will have wine with the fish", for introducing table manners and dining culture to the FORD canteen, for savoring every experiment of the canteen like it was fois gras, for looking like you understood us when we were babbling german and for winning the "I almost understand FatWire" award.

Maren for improving our job security, by training others for our jobs on an unspecified location on an unspecified continent, which will not be named, but should only be referred to under the code name “India”. Maren – jokes aside – no hard feelings from any of us I am sure – one should never shoot the messenger.

Tim Bailey “the Mechanic”, for screwing up QA and PROD. And for just screwing up. Don’t you know that art is only to look at and that you shouldn’t touch it? And also for setting his alarm wrong and missing his flight, then almost doing it again the following week.

Heike “shortstop” for her capability of streaming information at such an incredible rate that most of us ended with a buffer overflow before even beginning to understand what she was asking us, and still being able to interject “I don’t understand it”, “It doesn’t work” and “I can’t do it” 22 times into a single sentence.

Anke Hoffmann, for promoting, demoting, accessitating (no, that isn’t a word), processing, TD-ing, hmmm… really no reason for nominating you – screw up more often and you’ll have a chance Anke!

Stephan Barfknecht “the Roaster” for asking “läuft das Band”, even though he is reading Wikipedia’s newest entry for “coffee roasting”while simultaneously writing XSS exploits for Heise’s forums. And for mobbing and for his incredible soft-skills. Where is Stephan? Did he mention why he isn’t here today?

Winni, for spending countless hours transferring byte value 0 from DEV to QA, and subsequently to PROD, after tireless testing on QA to ensure that 0 really is 0. Of course, first waiting for Anke to promote the issue, after Anke also was secure in the fact that 0 is 0 and also tested the issue. For suffering through all Ford processes, following them to the letter and number, displaying incredible dedication to the obtuse, frustrating, and but still necessary processes, and being the best Clark Griswald there has ever been…

Ingo, for giving us Achmed (chhh chhh you said Akmed) and “do you have a flag?”, his undying support for the 1 FC Hennes, for his love for multiple individuals for whom he is inspired to say “Schätzelein!” and for his own line in the Ardennes, which he calls “Categories”. Actually, he is the inspirer for the Jeff Vader award and should be respected as such. And yes, the hair color is natural if you were asking yourself.

Reiner Harth, for his incredible talent for showing up (fashionably) late for almost every Tuesday meeting, with a full cup of coffee and a note from his mother, why he was late; for challenging multiple people with his innovative F+S data model and for that very impressive wide-screen display on his desk. And then of course for his extraordinary efforts operating two keyboards at the same time and his outstanding contributions in identifying the "Windows-L" hack.

Mikheil. For being the most optimistic user of a broken data model, that I have ever seen, defending Java and Eclipse to the point of no return, and to being one of the most capable and chaotic developers I have ever met… With emphasis on capable – ok you are officially disqualified for the Jeff Vader award. Klugscheißer ;)

Paul getting stopped at customs and spending half the day with men with rubber gloves.

Christian falling off his bike

Rainer not telling anyone about getting married

Jeff Vader Award

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:09:00 +0000

We had a bit of a competition to see who made the dumbest mistake or made themselves look the most foolish whilst working on ENGInE. I made it into the nominations but didn't win.

Here's our winner:

Sir Lord Siggi Baron Von Vader Ham of Cheem Beisenherz

Nominated by Tristan: Siggi, our fearless lead developer, for never doing anything, cancelling our developer’s meetings, always having a constant stream of assets publishing on some environment to which we have no access where we must acknowledge “oh he is important, very, very important”, not locking his workstation and thereby always being one step away from his sacking, always looking serious even when we are asking the most stupid question, but still understanding everything, accommodating everyone and being the quintessential leader. Oh, and there was that double-click on dev. But we won’t mention that. That was a clear grope for the Jeff Vader award

May the Force be with you!

I name this ship....

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:04:00 +0000

We've launched.

Find us at www.ford.ie, www.ford.de and www.ford.co.uk.

It's been a long and winding road, and actually the road is never ending but we are there.

Enough

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:35:00 +0000

I've had enough. I just want the project to be over now.

Launch dates slip through my fingers more easily than sand.

The Irish team are demonstrating an admirable level of patience that I will never achieve.

I feel as though every hour that passes brings with it a new problem or issue.

I'm mentally exhausted. My days are filled with too much emotion. There are highs and lows but it's the frustration that is so terribly draining. I'd love to leave work at work but I can't.

I felt I needed an escape, so I went to yoga tonight. As the group was relaxing I was thinking about problems and potential solutions, bugs, screw ups, issues, deadlines and priorities.

My colleagues are sick of me. My family are living with a monster. I struggle to see who the winners are.

I want it to end. I want the vision that we had all that time ago to be a reality. Almost there isn't good enough.

Mole

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:37:00 +0000

The ENGInE team has a mole whose identity must remain a secret.

Today they sent me this:

It inspires confidence don't you think?

Numpty of the day award

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:04:00 +0000

Apologies for my absence, I've been busy.

"About time" I hear you cry. I know, I know. A project of this magnitude, on three days a week, you're thinking it's amazing I find time to breathe let alone blog.

Well a lot of blogging happens in my own time and I have snippets of my own time seven days a week, and this is one such snippet. If you must know, I'm uploading pictures from the weekend to Flickr, and it takes forever, and I'm bored.

Anyway...Numpty of the day:

Large projects don't always run smoothly, rather like the course of true love. We spent most of today locked in a dark room trying to get our heads around a problem and come up with a solution. Coffee was a definite requirement at three o'clock when spirits and creativity were at a low ebb.

Let me explain the problem, without getting too technical.

Component copy was a feature of ENGInE, or so we thought. That's one of the problems with listening to sales people. They tell one things and one foolishly believes them.

Component copy allows one to copy a bit of one site, and plonk it into another site. It's a very handy (some would say essential) piece of functionality.

It appears that the product, as delivered, is missing this funky piece of code.

Today we ran through a million (exaggerating for effect) scenarios involving cutting, pasting, copying, sharing, translating, overtime, double time, triple time, intravenous caffeine, Prozac on demand and the rest.

It was just after we had discounted several of these many wonderful suggestions that Rishi said "Why don't we just copy that and then send it out?" which is exactly what component copy does and which is exactly what we don't have and can't do (right now).

This may not be funny to you, but after too many hours, and not enough coffee or calories, we found it rather too amusing.

So, sorry Rishi. I'm not picking on you, honestly. It's just that today hurt my head, and the laugh was needed.

Best laid plans

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:37:00 +0000

No project is perfect. This project is far from perfect. But...

When we hit problems and delays we work our collective backsides off to try and get back on track. We try and catch back time so that we don't compromise the launch date.

I've been presented with numerous change requests where I've said "No. This will delay the project and it's a change that, whilst it's nice to have, isn't essential for launch. Make this a post launch change."

I guess it's all about the leadership behaviours that we all know and love and the Drive for Results motivator is the one that's driving me right now, and throughout this project. I guess that's why it's all the more depressing when something hits us that we can't control.

We always knew that hardware sourcing was a risk on the project. It shouldn't be a risk but it is. It should be as simple as outlining requirements, placing an order, receiving delivery and setting everything up. It's not that simple. Don't ask me to explain why it's not that simple because I'll start to get politically incorrect, but it's not that simple.

(If you detect some irritation then you're very perceptive.)

So we expected hardware on Jan 18th and we didn't receive it. Our new delivery date was February 28th and once again nothing was delivered.

We have received something now and we're going through the process of ensuring everything is as it should be and is to spec but it's almost two months late.

I've been trying to think of an analogy that demonstrates how out of our control this part of the development is, so here goes.

Imagine you plan to launch a car in one factory on January 18th but an earthquake demolishes the factory on January 15th. It takes time to recover and rebuild and it's something you couldn't have prevented because it was an act of God.

I'm not suggesting that our hardware suppliers and God are related, far from it, but both are seemingly out of (our) control.

Trenchcoat required

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:24:00 +0000

There aren't many people on the team who have nicknames, or at least publicly known nicknames. Well we think Christian has coined one.

From now on Rishi shall be known as Columbo. He doesn't wear a raincoat but he does have a habit, just as a meeting is closing, of saying "Just one more thing."

In the thick of it

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:56:00 +0000

OK, New Year, new boss. What's changed?

Well not much actually, but give Dave a chance, he barely has his toes under the table.

Last week I sat in on some Fatwire training. Fatwire is the engine behind ENGInE if that isn't too complicated. It's the platform/software/language upon which ENGInE is being built.

Dee, who took the course, probably got a bit fed up with me. I kept asking questions. I know it's quite difficult to shut me up at the best of times but we kept going off at tangents because I wanted to know about this, that and the other.

The good news is that I wasn't bluffing when I told all of you that the new Content Management Tool would be more user friendly and more efficient.

You see when I told you all that I was relying on information given to me. I hadn't seen the tool, except for a brief presentation from a Fatwire salesman, and we all know how reliable sales people are.

It is far more flexible than Firefly.

Test

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:16:00 +0000

Brendan is off to South Africa to be Mazda's General Manager out there.

He says he'll still be logging in to check how the project's progress. I joked that he wouldn't remember this URL. We'll see.

So Brendan - if you are reading this then leave a comment and we'll know you still care.

And to everyone else - Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I'm feeling a difference

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:32:00 +0000

I saw three presentations yesterday, all about content.

This was a blessed relief.

I have read the ENGInE spec and it was dull. This is not a criticism. It's a document that wasn't created for entertainment. But I'm sure you can imagine that much of my work revolves around detail and the nitty gritty.

Content, however, is a completely different kettle of fish or at least it should be.

That's why the prospect of a day of reviewing content would seem to be better than the day job.

For six hours we looked at content, and I can't give you my reaction to it yet because Juergen hasn't seen it yet. But I will share some adjectives that I think can be used to describe the content of one of the presentations.

Interesting
Challenging
Different
Innovative
Unique
Un-Ford
Colourful
Difficult
Extensive
Pervasive
Noninvasive

And while we're on the subject of words, I'd like to state, for the record, that tangibilize is not a word. Unless of course you believe that words entered by the surfing public on www.urbandictionary.com should be counted as real words. If Urban Dictionary words could be included in Scrabulous then I'd win every time.

Dilbert to the rescue

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:37:00 +0000

Thanks Reiner. This doesn't quite sum up where we are, but it's close enough to make me laugh out loud, and then need a drink.

Blonde moment

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:54:00 +0000

Recently I've been put under pressure to produce a Business Owner View.

The example that ran to 165 pages was a little intimidating for someone that hadn't produced one before but, being the consummate professional, I started doing my research.

I figured I'd need help.

I wasn't too sure what a Contextual Motivation Model was, let alone a Motivation and Function Association Matrix or a Conceptual Network Model and these were just some of the components for the document that had my name against it.

I carried on reading and, to my relief, discovered that it isn't a Business produced document but one produced by IT.

I raised this and the task was placed with someone who already has enough to occupy more than his working week.

So although I've saved myself a horrendous task, someone else is now overloaded to the point where something's got to give.

The irony of this situation is that I can't find anyone who sees any merit in the production of this document.

No flying cars

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:34:00 +0000

Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars

Clever clogs

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:09:00 +0000

I guess one doesn't become a senior manager without there being some substance to one's knowledge and capabilities.

But even though that's the case it is damned irritating when they spot something that you, as the expert, should have picked up.

We had a review with Stephen Odell last week and he spotted an omission in our presentation.

I'd like to say it was deliberate; something we left out just to check that he was paying attention, but that would be a lie.

So we'll go back and rework that bit, and acknowledge our inferiority.

Doubting Thomas

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:53:00 +0000

Well actually it wasn't a Thomas, it was someone else who works in one of the markets - you know who you are...

"I don't have any faith in you, I mean Ford of Europe, delivering this on time." - (s)he said.

"Good point." I said "I can see where you're coming from, but we feel we're different (in so many ways) to other projects you may have encountered."

"Have you built anything yet?" they asked.

"Er no, but we hadn't planned to at this point in time." I replied.

"I'd be willing to place a bet that this project will be late." (s)he responded.

Now I know what's it's like to sit in the market and receive the product of the Ford of Europe machine. I know not everything is delivered when originally planned. I also know what it's like to work in Ford of Europe trying desperately to make things happen, according to the plan.

But wasn't it Henry Ford that said "History is bunk."? What has happened before doesn't need to have any bearing on our future. And, by the way, we are still on track to deliver on time.

Maybe I'm naive. I know I'm an optimist (which can be a curse). But I still think this is possible.

Would I put money on it? I don't bet.

Flux - in a state of

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:05:00 +0000

You could call it indecision and you'd probably be right.

I'm just having the wobbles about Help Me Choose. We've dithered and we've mithered and today Brendan and I took some half strength brave pills.

The thing is I'm not sure we've gone far enough.

I didn't roll over and I didn't relent without good reason though. It's easier, from the business perspective, to build complicated and strip stuff later if necessary than to build simple and add complexity later.

So on this one I'm sticking to the spec, but I'm not stuck like glue.

I can't wait for the gorillas to have a play (and yes I know it's guerillas but I don't get to make the chimpanzee joke unless I spell it gorillas).

The gender agenda

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:03:00 +0000

I've read 'Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus' and over the last week I've been aware of media coverage (particularly Guardian and Radio 4) of Deborah Cameron's book 'The Myth of Mars and Venus.'

It seems John Gray was writing a lot of tosh when he penned his book citing the many gender differences that are now part of our everyday vernacular.

Anyway, as I read around the subject I found a cool website.

The Gender Genie takes text (about 500 words) and analyses it so that it can guess your gender.I selected a couple of my blogs that didn't make it obvious I was female and cut and paste.

Guess what - I'm a man, but only just. The analysis produced a score of 652 for male and 640 for female.

I'm not quite sure what to think, or how to react.

Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:03:00 +0000

Ireland are our pilot market and I'm there now, having taken them through the 'where we are now' presentation which also starts to touch on the what we need to do next and planning for next year.

The term pilot market seems to be quite adventurous, quite exciting, quite daring.

And alternative term, and one I've encountered today is the concept of Ireland being guinea pigs. Now this has an altogether less glamourous feel. Being a guinea pig almost implies an element of being a victim. I wonder if the terminolgy reflects the level of nervousness being felt right now - the fear of the unknown. Maybe I need to work on improving confidence and a measure of my success in this regard might be to look at the terminology used.

If Ireland view themselves as adventurous pilots in six months time, I will have succeeded.

Progress

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 09:08:00 +0000

Well I've now caught up with the stuff that happened while I was away and I've attended numerous reviews of creative.

Homepage creative is agreed and looking spectacular.

Dealer Locator is looking amazing and the functionality is smarter than the current solution.

Help Me Choose is work in progress but is looking really good.

I have a flash demo of the homepage - if you want a walkthrough let me know.

I've got it

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:22:00 +0000

OK, I know it's nearly midnight and I should be getting my beauty sleep but, I've got it. Eureka!

Help me choose should be a wizard of some sort. A Selector Wizard, or maybe a Car or Commercial Vehicle Wizard. Anyway Wizard - cool word. Just saw it on the tfl.gov.uk site and had a blinding flash of the obvious.

Wizard of Doom anyone? Well I thought it was a good idea.

Maybe I've just read too much Harry Potter.

Choose-O-Matic advice please

noreply@blogger.com (acardus1) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:17:00 +0000

Salespeople are told that they should qualify a customer and find out about their vehicle requirements rather than asking about budget.

This seems to make sense. Have any of you gone in to buy a car, or anything else, and been insulted with the budget question before a salesperson has even asked about how you plan to use the product, or what features you might be interested in?

But even if this is the case, would it be fair to say that you have a rough idea of the amount of money you will be spending on a purchase?

What I need to know, for Choose-O-Matic, is whether we should use a price filter to try and point the consumer in the direction of the right range of vehicles for them to consider. Additionally, if we do include it, should it be the first item in the list for consumers to adjust, or the last item?