T-SQL Tuesday 170 write up: learning from abandoned projects

When I thought of this subject last year, I was really on the fence if it would work or not. Part of me was convinced it would elicit some response from the community, part of me was convinced people would be looking for a ‘happy’ start of the year and might not want to think or write about past learnings.

Part of me was right, but I never expected SO MANY of you to jump in and write so many wonderful blogs. It feels a bit unfair to summarise all your hard hard work, so please click the links to read the full stories. Well worth your time!

So let’s check out what’s been written. If you wrote a blog but I missed it, just ping me and I’ll happily add it.

Rob Farley

First makes the difference between failures and failings and then makes the point that mistakes happen and you can regret them, but we could all do with a little kindness and respond in a more positive way towards failures.

Gethyn Ellis

Also tries to look at the positive side and states that failure is the key to innovation and then elaborates on a very expensive failure. My favourite quote from his blog:”I have not failed. I’ve just found 10.000 ways that won’t work” by Thomas Edison on his work on light bulbs. He then tells us to embrace failure, fail fast and fail often just to innovate and improve. 

I like it as it sounds like the way I used to build programs in C#. Write code, compile, run, see the error and find a way to fix them. Or, no error but ‘unexpected results’.

Rod Edwards

Starts his blog by focusing on the inception of projects and driving the point that everyone must be fully on board to make it successful. He then goes on with a few technical tips he learnt along the way ending with the fair point he learns a lot from the successful projects as wel

Andy Brownsword

Writes about a project that sat between being abandoned and failed. He nicely takes us along this project, shares the learnings and finished of with the conclusion there were just different options. This blog is a bit longer but well worth your time to read!

Deepthi Goguri

Writes about a migration project where here advice wasn’t taken into consideration. Not because of her knowledge or seniority but because she isn’t male. In the end her advice turned out to be better than what her male coworkers suggested which should at least teach us to listen to everyone involved, no matter how or where you were born. The second case Deepthi writes about is making sure you have a good definition of what you need before going out and buying a tool.

Steve Jones

Begins his blog on how he finds that a lot of companies muddle on with poorly written and/or performing code that they should abandon. He then continues writing about The Advent of Cyber he finished and Advent of Code that he always abandons (like I do as well). The latter can be really tricky.

Damien Jones

Has an extensive read on the building of the amazonwebsharkwebsite and the reason it failed. It’s about unclear objectives, poor content and his way of working with the Hugo toolset. The blog then continues on how the new version was built, focused and how it’s adding value now.

Stephen Wuebker

Starts with defining abandoned projects a learning paths. He states that stuff happens and it’s not always controllable. The blog then follows with a SQL migration example that helped cleaning up cruft.
“it’s your response to changes that define your success” is another good quote for us!

Deborah Melkin

Writes about a number of projects that were abandoned for a number of reasons. She sees them partly as proofs of concept where she got to play with new functionality, get more comfortable with tech or learn about different options. By looking at these projects this way, they don’t feel as a waste.

Hugo Kornelis

Loves learning from mistakes. He finds it important to learn from them so he can make fresh new ones the next time. Creating a summary of his long read blog would never do it justice. Make some room in your calendar to dig into it. The read is well worth your time and digs into two big project with a lot of learning!

Rob Litjens

Is very lucky as he can’t really remember failed projects. But he finds it important to take a helicopter view of finished tasks or projects. He then follows up with an example that shows that with performance issues, you need all the specialists together to get to the root cause. Keep an overview on the problem at hand, investigate properly and make sure every piece of evidence is evaluated.

Thomas Rushton

Tells a story about a project where he delivered his code on time, documented and ready to be extended. Two years later he gets called in to wrap everything up. The project had gone massively over budget and the company pulled the plug before more money was invested.

Chad Callihan

Starts with a story on executing scripts as a response to specific tickets that took away time from other tasks. The team thought about creating an application to automate the work but in the end it fizzled out. He then makes the point that you shouldn’t be afraid to abandon a project if the time needed isn’t worth the result. In the end, the application served another purpose so even if the project was abandoned, it wasn’t a waste.

Kenneth Fisher

Is very open on how he screwed up at the beginning of his career. He tells the story of him being less in control of his temper than necessary in a meeting with a customer. It almost ended his job but he got a second chance. From that point on he focuses most on his soft skills.

Rounding up

What an amazing set of blogs. There are many ways of dealing with things not going as planned or going your way, but what really stands out in the blog is the positivity that you all have when it happens. You try and get the best from it and move forward.

Thank you all for your time and effort in writing these blogs, every time I saw a blog appear my heart made a little jump of joy. Thank you Steve Jones for making the start of january a very good one. If you like to experience the same, send him a message as he’s always looking for people to host #Tsql2sday!