Wandering around in the dark
For the last day and a half I have been wandering around in the dark trying to solve bugs with the project that I am working on. The project lost its guide; we lost the last original developer (his wife had a baby, congrats Igor). The result is that we no longer have anyone who understands the design, the implementation and the domain.
It is amazing how this changes things. Where before we could show him a bug and within minutes he could guide us to the answer, we now fumble around trying to understand the code and what it should and should not be doing.
I think the biggest thing this has shown is the huge holes in our understanding, of my understanding, of what the application actually does. The mood of our stand-ups have changed as well. Now there is uncertainty and doubt when it comes to fixing bugs. The confidence we had last week is gone.