Coming Soon!!!Here's a tip to anyone releasing a website. Listen to it, assimilate it, learn to live it. I've looked pretty... well... down right stupid a few times by committing to dates. (there I said it - I do dumb things sometimes. I'm pretty smart, but sometimes I engage in some very head-slap worthy acts of idiocy. If you don't want to be my friend any more I'll understand)
It's your job as the person at the top (or near the top) to know that software developers lie. Not always on purpose - Some developers are scoundrels and will royally screw you (DO YOUR HOMEWORK), but most of them genuinely believe they can deliver in the time they quote. The problem is, in all of the websites I've been part of building, I have NEVER, not once, nadda, zero times seen one delivered on time. Late deliveries vary, but a good rule of thumb is to take whatever time a contracted or in-house developer quotes you and add at least 25%. This is true for seasoned vets too - add extra time if you are employing a noob.
As you might have imagined from the tangental odyssey above, today's blog is about delays. We were supposed to launch on Friday, but when we transfered our code from the test servers to our live environment all hell broke loose. We were seeing bugs we hadn't encountered in ages and the intro page we had implemented was not behaving. With broken hearts we delayed the launch. The idiotic part is that I had told many of our investors, friends and family that the launch was going to happen. That's the risk you run when you commit to dates without a finished product in hand. At least we were smart enough not to issue press releases or alert the media. I said was dumb not a lost cause!
In summary, development ALWAYS takes longer than promised, don't commit to firm release dates until you have a solid working product, you'll make dumb mistakes sometimes - be sure to make up for them.
Now I'm going to go stare at our blank splash page and cry.
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