Just like that

Someone today asked me how the project I was working on was going. Before I could stop myself, I puffed out my cheeks, and did sound effects along the lines of, "KA-BOOOOMPH!"

I even did hand gestures to try to get this imagery across:

(Can you see something else in this pic? :) )

In the short space of 2 weeks - 10 working days - everything went from on track to "wtf is the point now?". One person in India fcked up. He didn't bother to tell anyone about the fck up in those 10 days. I think he was scared. In fact, I still don't know how he fcked up! An already aggressive deadline has been pushed out.

So now, what I've been working on since August, looks likely to be canned *sigh*

It's been a funny day. Is my ass on the line? Yes. Even though I've been taking a backseat on this project. Do I care? Yes. Cause I'm not able to deliver. That frustrates the hell out of me. 2 months of effort about to go down the drain. Can I still laugh about it? Sure. Cause, it's soooo typical of working in a big company. *Especially* in Rondon.

There's a lot of finger pointing. There's no hands up and taking responsibility. There's just one person in India saying, "Someone moved teams and I'm new at doing their job" - when it's 10 days too late to do anything about it.

Orifice politics

With a little more than 48 hours left to go before I board a plane and contemplate the meaning of my existence in the middle of Blackrock desert, the last game I wanted to play is orifice politics. You know, the game where I bend over and you fck me up the ass so I can move on with my life. Yeah, that game!

I'm tired of bending over. Especially since my back doesn't get scratched. The pain defeats the pleasure.

Fck this shit, I want to be ontop.

Today, email to colleague (who has been with company for a very long time, and who will get his way regardless of anything I say or do), along the lines of:
* I don't understand your hostility;
* I've tried to accommodate you, work with you, stay out of your way;
* I don't know what else to do to prove I'm working with you, not against you;
* You've blocked my work for no reason, and you've made me look incapable of doing my job infront of colleagues;
* If you don't want to work with me, I will resign;
* I don't want to work here if people don't want me here, or if I'm not adding value;
* I'm tired of tiptoe-ing around you;
* I'm sorry but I'm not good at office politics.

I'm flying off. Shove me, I don't care. Deal with it. I've done my job and I'm ahead.

Butt Specialist - Maybe you can explain ;)

Going LIVE

I had no idea what "global" meant until I started working on this project. Tomorrow, it's go-live. Here's what the month of September was like for me:

Anywhere you see "UAT Group", that's at least an hour of me briefing groups of people somewhere around the world via WebEx and conference call. Dubai, New York, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Greece, India, Taiwan, Bermuda, Bangladesh. For participants in Rondon, I had to do face-to-face sessions. That's close to 130 people I spoke to in the space of 2 weeks.

Anywhere you see "GSC Con Call", that's where I had to do an hour long debrief with the Support Team in Bangalore. Although they were great fun to talk to, they were exhausting with their endless list of questions. I can now greet you in Hindi - Namaste!

Every Monday was the Steering Committee meeting at lunchtime, where I had to answer to my workstream sponsors.

Anywhere you see "DEV KETCHUP", is when I had to go through defects, fixes, retest results, change requests and any issues with the Development Team. Who sat on the opposite side of the floor to me. My excuse for wearing trainers to work, "Because I keep having to run to talk to them, and I can't run in heels" :P

Smattered in between all those are meetings with the third-party trainers, more demos to new managers, conference calls to Philipines on developing Macromedia flash demos, and lots of time spent sorting through defect reports. Teaching non-technical business users how to test, is not easy.

Total number of defects raised for UAT: 98.
Go-live delayed by: 1 week (mainly because Dev were late in delivering to me :P)
Number of times yelled at by angry fat man: 3
Time off to spend with my parents: 3 days and I was still working :(

It's been such a solid hardcore month of work. I'm exhausted. But I'm proud :) We're going LIVE! :D (Me to my boss: "We have to go live on Monday, I'm losing weight!")

Special thanks to Trini for being my escape buddy *besos*
Special thanks to Shuai for defect management advice *grin* No Jira (haha, if only SF knew), no Test Director, just good old Excel done in a very efficient way.
Special thanks to KC for comforting me at dinner :)