This week was the start of our final two-week sprint ahead of our website launch. And it was tough.
Sunday had seen our last full delta migration of content, and the shutters go up on our current CMS so web editors could no longer add content. Monday saw a chunk of the team coming into the office (yes, the office!) to work together on final content checks and changes.
I think we’d got pretty excited about the opportunity to work together, in person, on this stage of the project. I know I had. And it was great to see and speak to people I’ve been working with for 8 months. The ability to just turn around and ask a quick question, give someone else a hand, or hold an impromptu stand-up to go over things was great.
At the same time, we soon found the disbenefits; working 2m apart meant that some conversations were easier done on webchat for those furthest apart, that feeling of asking a question being interrupting someone else’s concentration. Not to mention the time lost in traveling to and from the office for some of the team needing to do the school run. Oh, and shoes — wearing them for 10 hours a day was really weird.
But at the end of our three days it felt like the benefits outweighed the disbenefits, and everyone was up for another run next week. Unfortunately, office changes and short notice meant that isn’t to be.
Our at-home alternative for the remainder of the week (and next week) is the Content-A-Thon — an all-day webchat running in the background with mic and cameras off until someone speaks up asking for help or advice. It’s kinf of spooky suddenly hearing a voice come out of nowhere
Although we’d done all the planning we felt we could in advance, the scale of the work needed during the week felt overwhelming as we got stuck in.
Tasks that looked like they would take an hour or two took over a day, and the need to help each other out meant these got interrupted
We found problems that even detailed checks had missed previously. Our approach to check in detail on every page revealed some significant problems.
We also found functionality we’d missed on discovery. That image thumbnail gallery couldn’t be important, could it? Ah, it’s used on 115 pages….. It turns out we host audio files on the site and a player, and used 4 different ways to embed video. But *why*?
Our Contensis CMS and our approach to using it also did its best to trip up the migration import script. The best analogy I could come up with was that it was like learning English from scratch and attempting to code the grammar as you went. (“Oh, so ‘i’ comes before ‘e’ *except* after ‘c’….but also that other bunch of exemptions over there. Got it”). The folder structure used to set hierarchy also acts as a storage organiser, so we found a few instances where sections of content were lost.
Through all of this, the response of Placecube (the legendary Dave Burrows) was incredible. Seemingly impossible issues were resolved, sometimes in minutes. And although the beginning of the week felt like we were turning up one fresh hell after another, by the end of the week the problems had all been identified and solutions were in train. All this while standing up the Production server and doing another batch of dev work. Amazing.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a fan of Contensis as a CMS. Elements of it have really annoyed or confused me (although I have come to understand how some aspects of how it works being useful for a content designer). So although I’ve arrived at a web editor-level competence now I’d often found myself making mistakes or having to ask questions of my team.
In our switching CMS I started to see those roles be reversed, albeit unfairly, since the team have always been flat out on keeping the Contensis site running so haven’t had the time to get acclimatised to the Placecube CMS.
Actually, I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to do something practical and hands-on to help the team, although I still lack the skills of a real trainer (and the patience, unfortunately).
Having said that it wasn’t long (Tuesday afternoon I think) before Nat dug into duplicating a Liferay fragment to adapt it to what we needed, so I suspect by the end of next week I’ll be back to asking for help.
By Wednesday it felt like we hadn’t made the impact on progress in a way we’d hoped, and I was of the view that by the end of next week we might have to extend our content freeze. But somehow the next day felt much brighter.
By Friday I’d say the mood in the camp was pretty positive. There are still challenges ahead but it feels like we’ve got a feel for how to solve them, and (as ever) the team really worked as a team to get things done.
I’m starting to feel more confident about our final timetable and the likelihood of getting this thing delivered soon.
Some of the other things that happened during the week: