The Rescue Project

about the project

A brand new application had been designed by another member of our team. Then, while the application was nearing project deadlines, the designer left the company. I was asked to step in and help.

I knew the project had undergone multiple design changes, and was expecting to help resolve inconsistencies that may have happened as a result. I instead dusted off my development skills to get the front-end code back on track so we could meet our deadline and deliver a quality product, while still providing design guidance to product and project managers.

My Role

- Front-End Developer
- UX Designer

Skills Used

- HTML/CSS
- Bootstrap
- Knockout.js
- Accessibility standards knowledge
- Risk Assessment

WHat I learned

  • Diverse skill sets can be a real asset in a time of crisis. Even if you’re not actively using those skills, it can pay off to keep current enough so you can use them if you need to.

  • Sometimes projects don’t go the way the team wants them to. However, crisis-mode is not the time to assign blame. Finish the job from where you’re at the best you can. Then, once the dust settles, step back and see what you can learn from what went wrong. Apply those lessons to future projects.

  • If you’re working on a problematic project, don’t be afraid to bring in others to help as soon as you start seeing problems. It’s tempting to try to bear those problems all on your own, but projects like that are a heavy burden. Let someone else help you carry it, or you risk burnout.

Project outcome

The product has been purchased and used by a number of customers, and is gaining interest. We’ve continued to add features to it in order to meet a variety of workflows that were not addressed in the initial release. There remains a decent amount of technical and design debt that is slowly being reduced as we improve the product.