If one day was great, the next day was an opposite.

To start with, I woke up with a dull feeling. As I dragged myself to get to office, I got a call from office (yes it became that late for me to get ready! ) that the development server is wiped out of data. Not a good event for a project in a tight schedule. Most of the morning went in finding out the root cause while working in parallel to brining up the development server.

Later in the evening, I had a chat with the unit head of the new project to find out if tickets be booked; he informed that the trip may not occur! He continued to say that the proposal has not yet been accepted by the client. Next week the client is here and the fate of the project will be decided during one of the meetings.

I don’t know how to feel. It is just another day…though entirely different.

Not lot of days goes like today. No wastage of time today. Every minute was productive and that gives a satisfaction at the end of the day. True, I am tired to some extent; however, the satisfaction compliments the tiredness.

And one more good news: I got a one-year multiple entry Visa for Canada today.

For the past few days (almost a week), I have been busy with writing a proposal for the new engagement. I’ve written so many tech docs. But this is the first time, I am into proposal. Man, it is tough. I have to be careful with each sentence (the pre-sales guy who reviewed the doc, spent 20 min on a para inspecting each word and grammar! ). After so many reviews, I sent it yesterday. Hopefully there is no rework. I am tired of it.

C for Canada! Yes, that is right. If everything goes well, I will be traveling to Canada for a month to gather requirements for a project. For the past week or so, I have been busy writing the proposal for the same. This is the first time, I am writing a proposal and hence I enjoyed it. I had to have a review with presales guy and he questioned each and every word, literally.

This project is about building a MIS dashboard for senior management of the largest bank in Canada. By virtue of this, it becomes high visibility (and risky) project for our firm. If I were to believe what I was told, our CEO will join the initial meeting!

Sometimes, I feel great about such a project, but on the other hand I am also bit concerned that things should go well.

I have always been a workaholic. Over the years, I have built my confidence on many (little) achievements. However, I never got recognized by superiors in a notable way. That changed now. I woke up to the taste of Champagne today!

When I checked the mail today morning, I learnt that I was selected for a quarterly award for support departments of the organization. Here is the write-up of my supervisor:

Joseph X Jude (701329 | IS Team) for execution excellence

Joseph has managed the iQuest exceptionally well to bring it to a decent shape. After 3 PMs in last 6 months iQuest was struggling for a direction. There were no senior resources in the project. Joseph didn’t only provide the leadership to the project but also defined a roadmap for iQuest. This resulted in rollout of iQuest to all the DCs, usage of iQuest increased significantly in last quarter.

We had a team event last Friday. You can view some photos in WorldisRound

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.

I don’t know what you thought of the post title. But today I had to deliver the tough message to a team member that she is fired. I did give her many opportunities and did all my best to turn her around. But it just didn’t work. Twice earlier, I was in such a situation but the respective resources turned around remarkably. Though I don’t feel guilty, it is not a good feeling. Anyway, hiring and firing are part of being in the management!

Lots of activities happening…so busy. In the last three weeks, the least I worked was 10 hours. Somedays I worked up to 13 hrs. Are we making progress as a team? Well, only time will tell. Hopefully this month, we will fix all the high priority items.

With just 10 days to go for completing Six Sigma programme and I haven’t passed beyond the first chapter, the next few days are going to be busy as well.

In addition to all this, I’m also trying to get flat registered before this financial year, so that I can claim some tax benefit. That is another activity keeping me busy.

So as you can see lot to do. Not much time.