A quick video showing how you can get access to the frozen project where the project has no super users by using the “Claim this Project” link on the Project Listing page in your DeskAway account…

That nasty bug on a new integration project refused to be found and we were fried at the end of the day. We felt lost and defeated. Leaving the office seemed hard to do but coming back the next day with a fresh perspective was equally important. I think I was in my own world that night. I sent a text message to our team: “I believe nothing is impossible. I hope you think the same”.

We assembled early on Tuesday morning. I think we spent the night thinking about what could have gone wrong. Starting fresh we decided to take a step back and work the basics. This would help us incrementally build our confidence again and find the error(s).

Step 1 - Downloaded new code libraries from the vendor site and went through the tutorials and how-tos. Were we missing something?

Step 2 -  Made sure our server had the correct requirements. It was important to double-check just in-case there was an incompatibility.

Step 3 - Kept the terminal window open and used the ‘tail -f’ command on the error log file. This would help us squash bugs incrementally as we progressed.

Step 4 - Setup the code and made sure that the most basic example ran. It gave us a few fatal errors that we couldn’t make sense of. After searching the vendor’s site, there were others who had the same problem. We applied these patches. At last, the basic example ran properly.

Step 5 - This gave us confidence to add our code and made sure it ran too. After some minor modifications, this ran too and we were well on our way to complete the integration.

Looking back, we figured it was some old libraries and something buggy in our code that returned empty session values and broke the processing. We could have probably commented our code in the first place, but we opted to start from scratch.

This process is something that all developers go through. Though, what we learnt was very powerful and will stay with us for a long time:

a. Take up a challenge positively cause it ain’t going away. If you are going to face it, you might as well give your best.
b. Going back to the basics helps. Building on stuff that works always helps.
c. Control your mind when faced with a challenge. It will wander and get excited. Calm down.
d. Keeping everyone motivated and encouraged as you will be working with people with different stress levels.

That same morning, I came across a quote from one my twitter followers:

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”–Robert Louis Stevenson

Deep inside, I knew it would be our day.

Read an interesting article over at zenhabits.net titled - ‘The best goal is no goal’

Unfortunately, it never, ever works out this neatly. You all know this. You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off.

And so your weekly goals and monthly goals get pushed back or side-tracked, and you get discouraged because you have no discipline. And goals are too hard to achieve. So now what? Well, you review your goals and reset them. You create a new set of sub-goals and action plans. You know where you’re going, because you have goals!

I do have very high level goals (business as well as personal) that helps me make decisions and motivates me to do better. The key here is not to obsessively track and make gantt charts out of your goals but to be aware of them and work on the stuff that make you happy each day.

Does the same work for you?

Don’t get surprised, if you see a different kind of a logo for DeskAway on August 1st. Over the last few months, we have been contemplating an upgrade to our current logo (see above) which was initially designed in 2007 over a cup of coffee, on a MacBook. It was good enough to help us launch DeskAway. Though, recently, we have felt that it does not adequately convey the brand. Hence, we are upgrading our logo on August 1, 2010.

We wanted to design a simple logo with a very simple idea - to convey a feeling of freedom, happiness and a zen-like state, when you are in control of your work from anywhere i.e. away from your desk. After working with a designer for over a month, we are proud to have zeroed in on what is to become the new identity for DeskAway.

Stay tuned for the announcement and designer’s notes here on August 1st.

A quick video showing how you can manage your project team by using “Manage this team” link from the Project Overview page in your DeskAway account…