The culmination of 2 years' work

What seems like an age ago, I reported on here that we'd won a big piece of work. Slightly earlier than that, I'd been pondering whether or not I wanted to win it, given that the delivery was bound to be long, hard and fraught with problems. Well, the last 10 months have been...umm...long, hard and fraught with problems (and, if you count the time spent on the procurement, and the months before that spent on the prototype, I've been working on this for nearly two years in total), but finally - and on time - the UK immigration "Points Based System" went live today.

At one point I felt as though I would have preferred to be in Bracknell or Slough for a change, rather than sitting alone in my home study. The reflected buzz of excitement from darn sarf was palpable. The surreal start to the day - waking up to the clock radio set to Radio 4, where a Today programme reporter was discussing...Points Based System! - was matched many times over with bulletins, TV reports, and messages of congratulations from various senior managers which dropped into my mail box at various times during the day.

This is only the first release. There are at least three more releases to plan, design, implement and test and the remaining work will occupy at least the rest of the year and possibly stretch into next, but for now and for a few precious hours, we can at least afford to pat ourselves on the back and raise our glasses to a job well done.