I was reminded this Saturday of how important it is to plan and test things before any initiative or event hits production. In this case, my trip to our UK office was the “project” in question. I had made great plans to set up a semi-relaxing trip to meet the UK staff, get in a ton of reading and project work, and take in several pints of wonderful beer the whole week. Unfortunately, I left out a key element of the plan and testing – the passport.
First, I have a valid passport and am not completely clueless. However, it was locked in my safe in the garage and I didn’t give it any thought until I went to check-in online for my flight that morning. I then realized “Oh I almost tried to go to LAX for my trip without it”, simply because I was running around all week on other projects and getting ready for my trip. No problem. I just have to pop into the garage and retrieve it – good catch where my planning fell short, but the go-live still left room for error on this one.
So I go into the garage and stop suddenly trying to remember the combination. Uh oh – this could be a problem. In Project Management speak (why not) this would be a missed risk, now issue! So I spend the next hour trying all different combinations I can remember, and tearing my house apart to find the document. We’ve only been in the house for a year, so I still am trying to find things lost in the move. I have accessed the safe several times since then, so know I have the combo. I finally get to the point of a “Go-No Go” decision and with the costs of changing my ticket to a Sunday departure well over 2.5 times the original cost, I decide to cancel the trip. Go-live cancelled! Twenty minutes later, I find the safe’s documents and combination. The last ten times I went through this game should have triggered me (read: clued me in) to store the combination electronically somewhere, but I failed that test each time.
I had brief hopes that I would still make the flight, when I read the document and saw I did know the combination. I tried it again another fifteen times, with mixed speeds of the dial, a gentle or rough touch on the handle, and an endless array of vile commentary. Still a no-go. Here’s where proper testing or recurring access would have possibly prepared me for such an event. The safe was not opening with the correct code, and my trip was now certainly doomed. I have opened the safe several times in the past few months, but for some reason, it will not budge now. Perhaps it is a security measure with all the improper code attempts, but I am doubtful since it is a simple dial mechanical combination lock.
So just like the technology project rolled out with minimal testing and trials, I experienced a wonderful dead in the water feeling in place of a nice cool pint of draft in my hand. Lessons learned here were just like that IT project – plan, test, identify risks and ensure the bases are covered. Is it any wonder why my first professional training on Project Management used a vacation to Florida as the project (thanks to Mr. Andy Kaufman, PMP). I learned well from that training, but overlooked how well it would apply to even the simplest things in life – like a trip to another country.