It's inevitable... members of a development team are going to work really long hours.  Especially around crunch time!!!  We all know how it is!

It's both fun and frustrating to work at an organization who is growing in their software development lifecycle, process framework, and project management processes.  Almost everyone I have talked to describes places that have a less than perfect process in place for effective project management.  Even when there are policies in place, some of the times it's not even followed!

Has this ever happened to anyone?:  A resource is allocated for three different projects at a given time that have a total of nearly 90 hours of work in any given week?  And... that resource is also assigned with application management for production defects?

One of the things that makes a project run smoother is better resource allocation.  The critical path gets affected when resources are being shared between projects and application maintenance.  It's one of the "risks" that should be documented!

WARNING:  I am not a project manager.  This opinion is definitely coming from the development side of things :) I feel so bad for project managers at times.  I know that they care about just making sure that the project has a "green" light at all times and that everything will be finished on time (or early) with no defects!  I'm proud to say that I'm one of the members of the development staff that definitely strives for those same goals.

So... until later... keep being that Super Developer Resource!

Ed B.