Ideally, I’d have someone to review my data-migration process with. Ideally, there’d be someone to look at each step, and affirm that it makes sense, or question of there’s a better one, or if I’m missing something.

Whom I can help me here?

_____? I blame him for much of the sorry state of the application, and I do not want to enlist his help in anything if possible. Yes, it’s personal.

_____? He can give me another set of eyes. He is not seasoned enough (don’t take that personally) to know if a method is sound or not, but I could have done some form of technical review with him.

_____? I have wished since you started in this position that you would be a project manager who would help facilitate true project plans—not kick-off meetings, and marketing meetings, and change management meetings–but meetings to help nail down schedules for specific tasks in a project. However, you non-chalantly labeled this [project] as a mere release and did not seem to appreciate the breadth of activity needed to get this done, particularly when it was not ultimately going to be done by the “two developers over two months” that had ben touted. Second, and this has been a sore spot with me all along, you haven’t familiarized yourself with our environment and applications to the point where you can offer meaningful suggestions at a technical level in developing a project plan. That has been very frustrating to me. You have made a conscious choice not to learn about the basics of our our systems are developed, configured, and maintained. And you have little patience for skepticsm when I don’t think a previous experience of yours easily translates to a present situation.

Consequently, I feel like I bear the whole load of the projects. I feel they are always destined to fail, or at least have significant problems. I cannot foresee everything on my own. In a complex project such as [this project], there were dozens upon dozens of tasks of varying degrees of difficulty-level and time-consumption. I did very well at about 90% of these. The other 10% I failed out, failed to execute when the time was needed and failed to communicate to you that these were issues to be mindful of. As always, a 10% failure looks to everyone else like a 90% failure. I care enough about the project that I can’t help but take it personally and have it feel like a 90% failure.

I feel like we’re at a stalemate. We’ve been here before. I usually just let it all recede until the next crisis, because I don’t see how this can work, and I cannot survive with the level of stress I have while contempating trying to face this.

I don’t take solace in the mindset of “at least I have a job”. I might need to get out of this environment. _______ would be better off, because without anyone who really knows development, the only choice would be to adopt the new software package with no customization. I don’t know where I’d go, but it is hard to continue in an environment where I know customers and leadership don’t like the application and don’t trust that the team is competent enough to implement any significant changes, and where my manager hasn’t made the effort to understand the application at a level that would allow him to help development meaningful project plans.

My morale is about as low as it can get. It was terrible after the October 2007 upgrade, and this is as bad by the mere fact that it’s happened again. Despite my best efforts, I will always be in a position to fail and disappoint. This is not a healthy recipe for tackling working challenges on a daily basis.