Our Own “Mike Lantry” Moment
So, we had this project a while back, yeah? Officially, it had some boring corporate name, but around the water cooler, we all started calling it “Project Mike Lantry.” One of the older guys, a massive college football nut, threw the name out there. He’d go on about Lantry, the kicker – how he had these moments of big pressure, some he made, some he famously missed. Thinking back, maybe calling our project that was tempting fate a bit, you know?
What we were trying to get done…
The big idea was to drag our ancient scheduling system into the current century. You know the drill, it was slow, crashed if you looked at it funny, and the interface looked like something from a museum. They wanted it slick, fast, and reliable. “This is our clutch play, team!” the boss kept saying. We all just nodded along, trying to look enthusiastic.
How we actually went about it, and where the wheels came off.
First off, getting into the guts of the old system was a nightmare. Seriously, it was like digging through layers of digital spaghetti, undocumented fixes, and features nobody even remembered asking for. We spent what felt like ages just trying to map out how the darn thing even worked, never mind how to replace it. Every time we thought we had a piece figured out, some new weirdness would surface. “Oh, by the way, the Tuesday report manually overrides half these settings.” Cheers for that.
And then, the “small improvements” started rolling in. Right in the middle of everything, naturally. “Can we get it to auto-generate timesheets?” “What about adding a live dashboard for senior management?” The original plan just got buried under a mountain of new requests. We were building a shed, and suddenly they wanted a skyscraper. Our timelines? Became a running joke.
Then real life decided to pile on, as it does.
This whole mess was kicking off right when my partner and I had our first kid. Sleep? What was sleep? I was dragging myself to work, fueled by caffeine and sheer panic, trying to wrestle with “Project Mike Lantry,” and then going home to a whole different kind of chaos. My brain was fried. I remember one afternoon, just staring blankly at my screen, unable to spot a typo that was breaking a whole module. The pressure from work to “deliver Lantry” was huge, and at home, well, if you’ve had a newborn, you get it.
It got to the point where I really felt that “Mike Lantry” vibe. Supposed to perform under pressure, make the critical shot. But sometimes, things just don’t go your way. We started slipping on deadlines. Bits of it were buggy. Team morale took a nosedive. We’d have these endless meetings, trying to figure out a path forward, but it felt like we were wading through treacle.
So, what became of our “Project Mike Lantry”?
In the end, we did launch something. It was a much leaner version of the grand vision, with a fair few “Phase 2” items kicked down the road. It mostly worked, most of the time. Not exactly the glorious game-winning field goal everyone was banking on. More like we managed to scramble the ball forward a few yards before the whistle blew. They called it a “strategic rollout.” You gotta love corporate lingo for “it’s not perfect, but it’s out there.”
Looking back, that whole period was just a slog. The project itself was tough. And that nickname, “Mike Lantry,” it really stuck. Not for the glory, but for the grind, the near-misses, the sheer effort of pushing through when everything feels like it’s against you. Sometimes, when I see that new system actually doing its job, I just give a little sigh and think, “Yep, that was our Lantry.” We got there, but it sure wasn’t a thing of beauty.
