One More Day

Go live can be quite an exciting time. There is much anticipation and hope that the product you’ve spent months developing will be a smashing success right out of the gate. Dreams of fat paychecks and a life of luxury float through your head, thousands of naked woman chanting your name… Or that could be the complete lack of sleep. It is hard to tell, what with the sleeplessness and all.

From a technologists point of view go-live for a software or web-app is nerve-racking. You know you did it right, all the code is pure and simple, glorious and beautiful not full of ugly hacks and potentially crushing bugs. But then again did you double check that bug 247 has been resolved? Did I get to that issue or that one? Is it just a hacked kludge? Having not slept in days you start to wonder which reality to accept. As the deadline approaches the paranoia mounts and you begin to panic of issues that in effect are irrelevant.

And then it happens, the launch, the highly anticipated moment when all of your sleepless nights and months of work culminate in that one perfect moment. The world collectively sighs as the huge and unbearable issue that has hung over their lives for years is finally solved by your brilliant and easy to use web-application. You are heralded as a genius, the media sells your story on every network and news outlet.

Of course this never happens. Go live, the servers are running, and the trickle of people start to find you. And it is always a trickle. Marketing lets people know you exist, at first. Over time it builds up awareness, and then acceptance, and finally trust. No matter what you do, it takes time. The amount of time and the levels of success depend on how well you sell and how good the product is.

So here I am a day before the launch of a new product, having done this literally hundreds of times. I am not stressed, but that doesn’t stop everyone around me from freaking out over every little unforeseeable, potential issue. It makes me laugh, which would get me punched if I was in the same office as them. Turns out happiness and safety is working from home on go-live.