Post Go Live and Assumptions!

To start with, I missed my sweet sister's birthday for the very first time. Last year, I could fly home on a short visit and managed to be in India just in time to celebrate her birthday. But this time becuase of the Go Live schedule could not make it. This is the first time that I actually failed to greet my sister in person. I remember a week short visit to my home last year. Time flies by very fast.

Anyways, as expected the Go Live of my project has been smooth, without any major roadblocks. As it is common in implementation projects, we came across issues though they were not really major. Still as the system has not yet stabilised, people aren't yet celebrating. Specially the management, they expect many more issues in the days to come and are putting the teams on high alert.

Today, i was monitoring one of my programs that went live. I had to spend the night just watching the screen for the status flag to change to the chequered flag from green. Why to stay awake whole night? Just run the job, sleep and wake up in the morning to get the status. Boss, project mein HR module go live ho raha hai, and we are lagging behind schedule. So I had to stay awake as I had to wait for the flag to go chequered and have to tap the other guy waiting for my call to move ahead with the next job. This is all part of the go live hungama. And we can't deny anything at this stage of game in the project, since we are already live.

Why did I speak about staying awake whole night? Was it to express about the go live hungama..definitely not ..hmmm..yes to some extent. While I was awake for most part of the night I kept myslef busy by reading some of the popular blogs on the net. Wow man!, it is amazing to browse through the blogs and the beautiful ways in which people express themselves. Simply awesome! By the way I have to tell, that I have an assignment to read an updated post in my guru's blog (referring to the blog that one of my great friends). I was supposed to complete this assignment couple of days before. And as I always do in my project / personnel life missed the dead line this time though I had a valid reason for missing this, you might expect because of the go live hungama...yeah partially true..but the real reason is I actually forgot my guru's blog.l :( . As my TL always puts it, that I expect things to work, assume things to be executed successfully on the first attempt by being very optimisitic, and when things don't work in reality I look surprised. My actions make me think his feedback is correct.., this time around I assumed that my great friend will have his blog listed on his orkut profile as most people would do. If that was the big assumption, I had a back up plan too. As I rely little on my memory these days not because my memory power has come down, I have grown lazy not trying to remember things but document things, looks like the corporate life style has got to my head...documenting things. Anyways, back to the topic, I hardly tried to remember believing that I would definitely forget, I used the flag option on the blogs window, again ASSUMING that his blog will be added to my favourites list somewhere in my blog, which I never tested and totally relied on it. Now I find that even the second assumption went for a toss and I don't have my friends blog. If this was not enough, I had the third back up planc, again an ASSUMPTION, that i might find it in one of the many forwards that he forwarded to me in the recent past,and to everyone's expectatin by now and to my bad, he did not send his blog details in the email. Oh I remember (my memory is alive to some extent), he sent his blog details over the instant messenger which I instantly used to go through his writtings. Now I am sitting here with a 'surprise' look on my face thinking of the reasons to save my a** when my guru asks for an update. Hey my assumptions / efforts to get find the blog did not end there, as my last fall back option I used phone a friend to get to know if this common friend of ours can help me find guru's blog. This was the biggest assumption of all, as this get instinct is lot more carefree than me who gives the blog details of another friend who just started blogging these days....(blogging is something that we all got into these days...hmmm...nice to people expressing themselves)..anyways as expected even the last option (or do i say ASSUMPTION) bombed.

Now I understand "ASSUMPTIONS" don't just work in the project / programming they don't even work in the real life. Man this was the first lessons that was thought to us in this consulting profession that I am: "Don't ASSUME. (ASS + U + ME), because whenever you assume you are making an ASS of yourself (U) and the other person (ME)". As aslways I try to learn lessons the hard way...man I remember some one told me "Experience is the best teacher".

Now this go live hungama, is going to have an impact on our plans for this long weekend. Man we are asked to enjoy our vacations but with to have our dabbas (laptops) and the RFID keys to log into the client site in case of issues. We are expected to enjoy our longweekend in places where Starbucks is close by, so that we can attend to any issues just spring up anytime.

Anyways, though we have some places to visit in our list, haven't yet finalised one. Irrespective of the place we visit, I am going to take some pictures with the new SLR came that I bought for myself. Hope I will put that a better use during this long weekend.