The Talent in the Room

Last week Rick Erickson of Agile Pacific and I traveled to Dublin, Ireland on a project I have been working on with Agile Pacific since last fall. Going into Dublin progress on the integration to Oracle via the XML Gateway had been moving at what I have to describe as a snails pace due to developers/integrators on the project being in Time Zones up to 12 hours apart.

After being sequestered in a very small conference room with approximately 8 others for 30 hours over 3 days the Oracle integration had been modified, finalized, and tested to the clients satisfaction. The AgileShip and AgileView user interfaces had been modified to the clients specifications. The Parcel Carrier labels had been modified to the Carriers and client specifications, a test PLD upload had been submitted to UPS the DHL daily file upload had been configured, Pallet corner labels had been created and approved, and a System Administrator had been trained.

At one point during the afternoon of Day 3 the Client Project Manager asked me what was left to do. I took a minute to review my notes and checklist and was able to tell him we were done.

The project went from moving at a snails pace and weeks away from completion to being ready to be put into production in 3 days. I was once again impressed with what can happen when you get the talent in the room.