To beat the traffic, I decided to stay near the office. I would be moving to a flat today. People have traffic sense here, but roads are narrow and full of pot holes that traffic piles up so fast. Funnily, government wants corporate to take up road works! Obviously no corporate wants to do that, in addition to paying taxes. Politicos often prove they are morons.

It is a casual environment at office, at least until now. There is a heavy backlog of issues to be resolved. I got to bring in process, schedule releases and follow-up to make these happen. Challenging, but motivating.

One (more) thing that I like here is that unlike in Chennai the canteen has non-veg too.

The CRM implementation that I’ve taken over is simply a mess. Forget that it was implemented largely by college freshers, who learnt PSFT one day and rolled out the application the next day (it is not that bad, but similar). It is used by CXOs (Chief sales/delivery/finance officers) of this firm and they cannot agree on terminology and process.

And believe me when I say this: there is absolutely no documentation. User requirements were not captured, analyzed and designed or there is no proof of it. It was not rolled out long ago that docs are missing; there has been only one roll-out and it happened the beginning of this year.

I’m doing lots of things in parallel: Fixing the system on one side; bringing a clear process for the development team as well as business users; and trying to document the system. May be I’ll be successful or may be not. At least I would’ve tried.

But I get good amount of support from my boss and the functional co-ordinator. That is a good news.

I don’t know why I felt the way I felt about joining a new firm. I felt excited as well as terrified. After being with a firm for 7 years, I switched job in 6 months. I’d my own concerns about proving myself in this firm. Being in Bangalore is exciting as well as terrifying because the garden city has been inviting me for a decade and finally I am here; however I’ve questions about being ‘myself’ – living independently and near nature.

The first day did go without much trouble. Just filling forms!

Some photos of the farewell in the office. I’ll miss the fun I’d in these past six months..

Think about a reclusive guy being metamorphosed into a party coordinator. That is what happened with me. I didn’t have much work at office. And everyone seemed very busy. So I decided to spoil that by arranging parties. Now you might ask, parties for what? Whatever! Right now, we did a birthday party for two of our teammates. We ordered pizzas and had bit of fun. It relaxes the team. And I’ve something to do!

If it was ‘sitting simply and getting monthly’ for the past six months in the previous company, here work is in full swing. I’ve not even gotten my access card, but work is allocated and deadlines are given. I’m in charge of (Peoplesoft) CRM implementation in the internal department, which tracks accounts, opportunities & like process. Initial challenge is to get the implementation SOX compliant. Since SOX non-compliance will de-list the company from NASDAQ and will be a potential cause for loss of business, it is of high priority.

An ongoing challenge is managing a team for internal implementation. There is a constant outflow of resources and freshers join the team. So it is going to be a challenge to mentor the new resources and get them up to speed but also to keep an eye on the project delivery dates. After a year, they will be released into ‘Projects’ stream. This also means that I’ll not have any onsite opportunity for a year.

Added to the official schedule, I’m trying to find an apartment. It is so expensive!

BTW, I thought Chennai traffic was bad. Come to Bangalore. It is worse. For a city with international fame, the infrastructure is worse. It is way below the standard even per Indian standards. Ok, let me stop my complaints. I’ll have to adjust and look for ways to enjoy!

On Friday & Saturday, I was in training on ‘Microsoft Project’ tool by an external faculty. Though the firm is a small one, it invests a lot on training. The faculty was skillful and the course contents were tailored to suit the crowd – a mixed crowd with few already exposed to planning and project management and others looking forward to get into those shoes. One distinguishing factor of the faculty was that he stuck to the schedule (yet discussing few out-of-course topics).

I’ve tried my hands on the tool earlier, but always thought of it as just-a-scheduling-tool. I didn’t know the multitude of options and its effective assistance to a project manager. Waiting for an opportunity to try out my new found knowledge!