Good is the enemy of the great

Working on a big project, you run into other vendors from time to time. Today was one of those times, and I was struck by the contrast between the two organizations' approach. I've always believed in doing what needs to be done to get the job done, even if it's not 'in my job description'. This seems to go along with the philosophy at PSS in general. We follow things through to completion, and do whatever is needed to deliver to our customers. It's truly a partnership with our customers, and never an 'us' and 'them' situation.
The contrast today was watching another vendor who would not step out of the boundaries of their task when a challenge arose. It was actually a simple task of installing a missing service pack on a server. But because this was supposed to be completed before they started installing their components on the server, they refused to continue until the service pack was installed.
Now, I've been on many a project where a customer had not completely prepared an environment as we had requested, and there are times to push back, but many times, it's just time to roll up your sleeves and pitch in to get the job done.
In the end, I went ahead and installed the service pack, which was not within our scope of work for the project either. It's about doing the right thing, and doing what is needed to make a project successful. This is what sets good companies apart from great companies. As the old saying goes: "The enemy of the great, is the good".
I think this is what makes PSS a success, and why even during a bad economy, PSS continues to grow.

Juggling

It's a crazy week - lost a resource from our team, and now we're scrambling to take up the slack left behind. I'm currently tied up on a very large Upgrade project. Now we have to pick up on several projects - CTI Routing, Reporting fixes, and support for a large client. In addition we're looking at another large project hitting in the next few months. It's going to be a wild ride for the next few months.
Tonight, I'm going to interview a new candidate, so maybe we'll get some relief if he comes aboard.