Life is an irony.

I used to be relatively free during April/May. Then, the CRM team had only 3 members and the next phase of enhancements were cancelled due to budget reasons. So I pestered my boss for more work.

I was given the responsibility of stabilizing a project management tool which is given much importance from the top management. It is developed with a view of one-point audit tool for all certifications – CMM, SOX and so on. And it is based on an in-house J2EE framework. Man! I didn’t know what I was getting into. The in-house framework is a mess and the tool is developed in a spaghetti fashion. Even to get to the login page it takes 2 min. Even if one would get into the application, it is completely unstable and unreliable. That is not all; the existing team members (some have been in the project for more than 2 years), want to leave the internal project and move to delivery projects. They are completely de-motivated since they feel they are not properly compensated and recognized. I had spent considerable time with each one of them and working out a plan to release them without affecting the on-going project schedule. But wait a min. If I have to release them, I need new folks. And that is where the irritatingly slow recruitment dept pisses me off. For such aggressively growing company, recruitment dept is pathetically slow. It takes almost 3 weeks to nail down a candidate!

As if this work load is not enough, the new CSO of the firm wants to revamp the existing CRM system. If we need to implement these enhancements, it would be at least a 35 man month project. With a mess that PSFT has created, my boss is also giving serious thought of replacing PSFT CRM with something else. So I’m into requirement gathering for the new development and looking out for a new product.

Now 12 hr working day has become a norm. Now that I have a RSA token and can access most of the project related contents through VPN, I’m working even at home.

I’m a workaholic. But I start to wonder if this is stretching me too much.