WorkTales

Did you hear about the project that had more money than they could spend? Well, it isn’t quite as simple as that but close. The first phase of the project had problems, went over budget and was delayed but it made an amazing comeback. By the end of the first year, the new system was wildly successful despite some of its short comings, it was decided that there should be a second phase with more functionality.

This is where things get a bit sticky. It is quite reasonable to create some sort of a specification/road-map so we have a plan on what to work on, which is exactly what project Zinger did. Yet due insufficient internal sources and scheduling conflicts instead of getting this finished early in the year it wasn’t finished until the end of June.

The project cannot take this money and start until they have a plan and thus only 100k of the planned 550k was used by June. The project is behind and it is unlikely that they will be using much of the 700k that will be available for the second half of the year. Under normal circumstances you would think that not “pissing” away a lot of money when you are not prepared is a good idea. However, the normal budget rule will take precedence

“Use it or lose it”

Next year when the money is needed to finish up what was started it is almost certain that the budget committee will see that they needed considerably less than originally planned amount for this year and will cut accordingly.

Yup, computers are everywhere. It was the early nineties and personal computers were really taking off in offices. I felt so strongly that computers were the future that I helped a small insurance agency computerize. This small agency actually did most of the hard work by hand but they learned of a custom software package that filled this niche. I met with them and we looked at what the software would support, it was actually a nice little package which could support a number of different products, agents and payment structures. I thought it was a bit pricey but we agreed on terms and so both the accountant and I were to go back for another visit to teach her how to use the new software.

Dorthy and I drove there and again met with the developer at the agency. While she was learning about how to use the software I was discussing what hardware we would need and learned about the installation process. This wasn’t installing SAP or Oracle, we were only going to be there for two days.

Before we were sent, nobody had actually explained one of the tiny little detail. I only knew that we were staying at a local hotel. Between the driving and the workshops it was a full day but eventually it came time to check into the hotel. I simply walked up to the reception desk told them my name and company and they gave me a room key. I didn’t know any better so Dorthy and I went to the room, unpacked, had dinner and went to bed. Well, I am not entirely certain who was more surprised the next morning. I received a wake up call from my father, but it was Dorthy who answered the telephone. She clarified that he did indeed did get the correct room and handed the telephone over to me.

I cannot remember most of that conversation but my father, the boss, did explain that he did reserve two rooms one for each of us and that it was not necessary to share. Actually nothing did happen, but that could have been due to me being the boss’s son, and that the boss’s son wasn’t so experienced.

Yup, smart enough to set up the IT infrastructure single handed but not smart enough to know that the office doesn’t force the staff to sleep together on business trips.

Perhaps everyone who has ever heard about the budgeting process has heard examples of what could best be described as binge spending at the end of the year. The department was given a fixed budget and if it wasn’t used up by the end of the year then the common consensus from the big bosses is that they were given too much and next years budget should be smaller.

I always thought that getting new chairs, monitors or even a new coffee pot in the middle of December were probably not in the best interest of the company but I did like the coffee. Yet, I thought that expenditure was about as crazy as it could get.

Imagine my surprise when I was speaking with my brothers girlfriend. It turns out that the bigger you get the more complicated it gets. At her company all the same types of yearly budgetary magic was performed. The most typical questions is how much money do we have? How much is needed for which projects? Is this a project that is continuing from last year? I also suspect that projects for some people or departments are prioritized over over others – requests for sales vs requests by human resources.

None of what she said really surprised me too much, well, until the budget is approved. Once the budget is approved, the process is still not over. It seems that once the budget is approved they sometimes pick a number out of the air and then shrink budget by that amount. I guess it could be quite traumatizing for the department that received an approved budget for their small projects only to find out that money wasn’t actually forthcoming.

In her company this is a completely separate process so that budgets are approved first and then only some weeks later the departments find out if they really will receive the money. I would have thought that this entire task would have been done as part of a single comprehensive budgeting process.

Nope. Apparently the development department thinks differently than most of management types.

It was a long day and it was looking like it would be getting even longer. To release my program to production would require a number signatures before I could even begin. In a pure development environment I was used to having a list of changes as long as my arm that I was expected to work on as soon as possible but as a consultant things were a bit different. You cannot simply make changes to a production treasury system because you didn’t like the style of some of the code or because you would like to test out a new technique. The amount of paperwork that is required for even the smallest change is unbelievable but after enough people signed off on it, I was permitted to begin a change that the users wanted, nay, needed for future expansion.

It was late and I was hoping to get in some development done without any interruptions. It turned out that not everyone had left. It seems that Pitr was also on a mission and also enjoyed the quiet when most people had left. Just a bit of background, the production downtimes are the third Wednesday every two months. They are not guaranteed to occur but more often than not some fix does need to be released. The year is 2013 and the production downtime plan has been published for the remainder of this year and next but it seems that isn’t good enough for the accounting team. It seems that they wanted to know what the plan will be for 2015, yup two years in advance.

I can understand a bit of planning but perhaps it wasn’t quite clear that these downtimes are for only two hours and they are not even guaranteed. Well, Pitr had a solution. His idea was rather than answer these types of questions piecemeal he spent most of his working day writing a macro to generate the list of dates.

Well, I cannot say how much of his time it did indeed take to create the macro, but I can tell you how much of my time it took. I was in the middle of debugging my program when Pitr came to show off his programming prowess. He didn’t take any hints that he was preventing me from finishing my work. I spent a good 45 minutes listening to the rational behind creating a macro to generate a list of downtimes for the next 22 years.

It is not clear if the treasury will even continue to use the software for that entire period, but we now can find out when any downtime is on any environment from November 1st 2011 until December 28th 2033.

Even though I would have originally thought that this is the end of this story it is not. If there is any unexpected change to this plan for any of the seven environments over next 22 years, then the downtime list will need to be manually amended with either the unplanned cancellation or the unplanned downtime. The only thing that I was certain of was I was happy that Pitr wasn’t my employee.

I came to work and was speaking with Ezra, one of the other consultants at this project, who was regaling me with his weekend and climbing adventures. It was pretty normal stuff until he said that the consulting company that he was body-shopped to wanted him to reduce his hours. He dutifully passed this information on to his employer.

It is a very weird construction that came about because the project client demanded a single invoice so all consultants working for this project had to be ultimately billed through a single company. I was going through a different agency to this consultancy so the client did have a single invoice at the end of the month.

I was curious if Ezra would have to reduce his hours only to learn a few days later that he might be leaving the project at the end of the following week. This actually was for personal reasons but it all came to a head because of the difficult working conditions. The difficult working conditions were mainly brought about by the long chain of companies involved in his contract.

The main consultancy and his company both insisted that the actual client was not to know that Ezra might be leaving. This seemed a bit unfair in my opinion to the client but Ezra was told that they would be informed in due time. Every few days he would send mail to his handlers in Austria to be told that everything is going ok. Finally, Ezra told his handlers that if he didn’t hear that the client had been informed by Friday morning, otherwise known as his last day, he would have to tell the client.

The next morning came without any word, so Ezra had a coffee with the project manager and explained the situation. Of course a few hours later he was told that the project didn’t want him to reduce his hours and that they hoped he would be staying with for a long long time. Ezra was a pretty easy touch and did remain until the end of his contract. Unfortunately some months earlier the client had forced him to change to a three month contract which was expiring in ten days.

So Ezra stayed for a little over a week and left anyway.

I guess when it comes to monopolies most people think of either cable, phone or regular mail. Well, In this story it is either the Deutsche Post or it is the Deutsche Post + DHL. I ordered two different items, one from Ebay and one from Amazon. Some weeks later I found a small card in my postbox I was curious what exactly this parcel or letter might be.

I was out of town for a few days and when I got back I saw a slip of paper telling me that there was a package waiting for me at the post office. The document that the post left implied this was a book and that was a bit surprising but I headed off to the post office that afternoon.

I was feeling really lucky, nobody was standing in line and this should take just a few minutes before I can enjoy some nifty book or electronic gadget. Well, the person was actually quite helpful in all aspects except for giving me my package. It turns out that once they left the receipt saying it was too large for my mail box they promptly lost the package.

Who could have foreseen that the Deutsche Post, a little German monopoly, could manage to lose one little letter/package. Well, I guess I wasn’t all that surprised when the person from the post office gave me a small piece of paper the size of a business card with the letters DHL on it and their service number.

Wow, the opportunity to call and complain to someone who isn’t really interested in my issue and do it all in a foreign language. Well, just like most human beings, I also sometimes think of reasons to procrastinate on topics but this one was a no brainer. I would simply ask my wife to break out her German and give this fine organization a call and ask about the package. Well, she did call and was given a different number (from their package desk) which was different than the telephone number that we were given for missing letters. I guess once you get to the size of DHL you want to split up the department of missing stuff.

I wrote down the date and time of our conversation so I would have this for my records only to realize three days later that, gasp, I had not been called back by the DHL about my missing package. I figured, what better way to start of a Monday for me and for DHL than give them a call about lunch time. I did call and explained the history of this call to what seemed like a very friendly person who after about five minutes suggested she would transfer my call to the appropriate person.

Well this second gal was also a pretty good listener and as I didn’t have the form in front of me she pointed out that without being able to recite the “magic” number from this form that she would not be able to help me any further. I must be getting old. Instead of asking how I can “klagen”, which is to complain or sue depending how you translate it, I let it go. As I happened to be out of town I once again asked my wife to give these fine people a call.

Well, she called, and the conversation did go quite similarly but as she could confirm that no magic number was on the card, that did narrow down their search. It turns out that the person on the telephone did not know the current status of the letter but he could see that a letter has been sent to us with the response from the post office.

Wow, the quite small package came from China only to be lost within less than a mile from my house. This is considering that this particular package was outside of my house, well briefly.

What does this letter say?

You have made the effort to describe your experience with our service. For that we say thank you.

We are sorry that you have tried in vain to pick up a consignment at your local post office.

We cannot determine what happens to your package. For letters in contrast to packages – the individual processing steps are not documented.

We have forwarded your document to the appropriate department on site. Thus we want to ensure that you continue to receive your post also from the local post office branch that is on your delivery notification.

If you have questions about the Deutsche Post DHL, then please contact us.

My favorite part is the weaselly way that the post office tries to distinguish that normal post is treated differently from packages, despite the fact that this “letter” was brought to my door before being brought back to the post office to be lost.

I guess it is still too early to put full trust in the German Post or the DHL.

Rules are probably a good thing but even rules with the best of intentions can have negative side effects. Even if the side effects are somewhat minimized, there might be other factors that really should be carefully considered – a car that is costs half as much as its competitor might not be as good a transport solution if it doesn’t have any brakes.

Unfortunately, my new boss isn’t able to make this distinction. When his boss says jump, he asks how high. Recently the rule came from above that all external staff should be working off campus which is really not a problem if they are not needed for face to face interactions. All communications are supposed to be done via the ticketing system and for that one location should be equivalent to all others.

The fly in the ointment is that it is still not possible to do all the same level of diagnostics and support remotely as while on-site. However, our boss is insistent that they have to leave by the end of next month whether or not full connectivity has been achieved or not.

On some days I can actually picture him marching over a cliff based on some silly order from above.

Never, or almost never trust someone who opens an argument with this line, but in my defense, I think I was right. The company was going to transfer the developers from London to Chicago. Everybody who was going was terribly excited and as they should be. Getting transferred by the company with all the necessary paperwork to a foreign land. See the world at the companies expense – priceless. Yet some of the guys were leaving soon enough that they would get a chance to experience a Chicago winter.

I told Paul he should go and purchase the warmest and thickest coat he can. I actually did like his choice, which was cashmere overcoat and it looked really good. My counter point was that it also felt about as thick as a couple of pieces of paper. The wind will blow right through.

I probably should have also mentioned he might want a hat and a scarf. We never spoke about it after this but once we were both relocated I did occasionally see Paul with his coat, but most of the time he wore a winter jacket that he bought in Chicago.