I know, I know. You’re all going to scold me, I’m sure. I haven’t blogged in a while, and you, my ever-patient readership have become quite used to me not spewing out any of the drivel that you’re used to seeing on my weblog. I’ll try to do better. I really will.

The past few weeks have been intense. Last week, the 5th week of ThoughtWorks University, the Analyst team had a number of late nights. We carried out a ThoughtWorks Quickstart, a short and intense period of analysis. I think these generally take a few weeks or perhaps a month, but we only had one week. We created over 40 stories, with detailed narratives, as well as awesome lo-fi and mid-fi prototypes. Of course, we also carried out some Usability, which solidified a lot of our ideas and interface designs. All in all, our “customers” (who were really just a few of our trainers) seemed happy with our results and we were hurdled into a frenzied development week that has been taking place over the past few days.

Development has been CRAZY! It turns out that we completely overestimated our velocity when we created our high-level release plan. We kind of knew this when we set out on the week, but I don’t think we realized the resulting implications of such an overestimation. Having to tell a client that you’re behind schedule, and then having to do it again the next day (and then again the next day) is just plain ol’ tough. Even if the “customer” is really just a trainer who’s posing as an unhappy client.

Still, the learning experience has been great. Tomorrow we’ll hopefully have some sort of release, then we’ll graduate from TWU. What a journey. So fast, and so educational, in oh-so-many ways. What a journey…