That title!

Well, it's true you know.

When you use good scripts to run against your project, or if you are an optimist, with your project... You can save significant time and money. In some cases, budget is not a consideration. However, the timeline may be pushed out because of manual tasks.

Let me give you an example of taking too much time for a project.

In 2018, I was approached to work as a consultant for a Moodle upgrade - not even a migration.

There were less than 100k and only a dozen courses. In my experience an upgrade would depend on which version. Sometimes you are working with a really old version and need to upgrade to upgrade. It happens. That wasn't even the case.

I was informed by the recruiter the job would take 6 months. I was stunned. I could do an upgrade like this in... hours. This place wasn't even backing up the database. So an export and regular backups saved to the server which had backups was important.

Amateurs.

"6 months?! You have the wrong leadership there. Make me the Project Manager. I'll do it in as much time as it takes to get access, create backups and upgrade."

I was assured by the recruiter the Project Manager knew what she was doing. Didn't sound like it to me. Then, it occurred to me...

"Oh, your milking this for all you can get. That's money in your pocket. You see it as necessary. I see it as highway robbery. Good luck with that."

I am coming at you as the honest GNU Linux consultant. The playing field is not level. If your project manager cannot understand what you do, consider RUNNING! I worked with a guy who was supposed to do a like for like - for 75k users and about again, a dozen courses in Moodle. He milked it for over 3 years. My next gig was similar. I did it in 3 days, tethering my phone so I could ssh into their system. In addition to the upgrade, I gave them improved security and scaled for growth.

Scripting in bash for fun an profit!