MEMORANDUM
First, congratulations to everybody on the team for arriving at this point. A product that didn't exist outside of conceptual musings just three months ago has launched. Applause. Salutations. As they say in the old country, may fortune never gift you the haircut of a North Korean leader.
We're on code lock down (with the exception of the about pages) to keep things stable during the demo. Yeah for today!
Tomorrow and Going Forward
While no one can deny the significance of what was made there is plenty of criticism of how we got here. The development team was just coming to grips with our pipeline only to revert to the "bad-old days" means of production for this (including, but not limited to "oh shit, that broke?!" scrambling when we went live) - something that jeopardized health, humor, and good software habits.
We have reams of things to be done - from basecamp projects, to text files of bullet points, to email threads, to todo comments in the code. That needs to be prioritized. Everybody has their ax that they now want to run off and grind. We've got a hodgepodge of approaches, technologies, and focuses. We need to get those aligned so that our short term success don't turn into long term misery.
It isn't rocket science. We articulate the needs, attach sizes to them, prioritize and then do the necessary horse trading to fit in the available time. There's a planning meeting for tomorrow at 2pm. Be sure to have your outstanding work detailed and ready for inclusion. With your help we can return to a semblance of desirable workplace conditions.
Gluckwunsche one and all. We've fought a good fight. Welcome to triage.
