They were running benchmarks on the soon to be released next gen systems and up to their neck with both hardware and software issues needing to be fixed before anything would run successfully. His WTF moment happend when the CEO passed him in the corridor and said 'I hear you are getting great benchmark numbers on the new systems'
Sometimes it's simply a different, legitimate perspective. I recall five or six years ago I was charged with developing a new process to be rolled out in about six months time. Had enough control to be able to manage it effectively, business processes and IT were both under me. Learning and Development were handling training but on details from me, with my sign off and me gatecrashing the first couple of training sessions.
Of course this nirvana couldn't last, two months in the timescale changed from "in four months" to "next week". Made for a very scrappy week getting ready in those conditions but we rolled out on the day. A couple of hours late admittedly for some last minute training, but the right day.
At perhaps 2:30pm the ops manager ultimately responsible for the area walks in and asks how is it going? Response from the rank and file: it's complete chaos. My response: it's going relatively smoothly. The team leaders involved thought much the same.
The concerns of rank and file were they didn't know what they were doing. I'd expected that, in most cases it was simply underlining the relevant part of their training if they hit a snag, there was only one area where I'd noted the training itself could be improved to say "In these cases (and that includes THOSE cases)..."
The other was the "Process doesn't work" pile. Obviously you'd rather not have those but it's hardly unexpected. Quoted some figures: we've processed 3000 cases today, the mystery box has about 20 cases in it. Of those about half are Welsh indicating a particular issue, I haven't had chance to fully investigate the others yet while I support the end users...
He went away absolutely delighted, sure a few teething issues but as smooth a roll out as you could hope for. Same situation, just a different perspective.