so on monday i was at the big DFTU client, and as i came out of the big meeting with people that run major departments of the DFTU orgainzation, where i have bascially no purpoe other than to take notes and not make myself seem like a stupid 22 year old. I get asked to sit in on another meeting with one of the directors and 2 outside consultants that work for the DFTU’s IT department.
consultants, IT, sure i’ll sit in.
So the DFTU is trying to launch, for all intents and purposes, a new company, but at the same time, levereage (by which i mean mooch) the main, parent organization’s infrasturcure. As such, the main parent company’s IT group will be building/managing a series of systems for the group i work with.
got it? good.
So in this meeting his a project manager and his business analyst side kick–she apparently is either in training, or was told by a guy that she shouldn’t seem too smart b/c it intimidates men or makes her look fat or something b/c she was really really really playing the dumb angle up.
So it turns out that i was on a conference call with these people once-not that i remember, i was probably bloggign or something but i digress.
The PM launches in to a speech about project lifecycles, and differen phases of IT projects about gathering requiremetns and setting scope, establishing success criteria, prioritizing shit and so on. my jar dropped–this fucker stole my intro meeting speech. it wasn’t word for word, but it was pretty fuckign close. granted, i really feel like i have a better delivery, but this guy is from italy, or somewhere, so his accent kept getting in the way. so he took about 20 mins yammering about a working session ot gather requirements and refine the requirments document we gave him, and then schedulign a kick off meeting with all the SME’s and stakeholders and blah blah blah. and i realized how fuckign stupid all this shit is, how it coudl be said in 5 mins and how, not that i thought my company’s project methodology was all cutting edge and unqiue, but in reality, how fucking obvious this all is.
Meanwhile Ms. tag along just kept saying “i’m just observing, I have nothing to add [tee-hee]“ and “oh is that how late it is? i didn’t wear a watch today!”…
so the PM talks for a while, then we try to say something, and he jsut says back–well it’s really important to schedule some time to discuss what we need to discuss. and i immedately thought–fuckign consultants, just trying to burn thru more billable hrs but setting up another meeting!– it was truly a bizzare experience.
so i guess i started getting my groove on, b/c i started throwing out all the shit i hate to hear from clients—
Actually, i’m not sure were’ there yet, to kick off, I think i’d rather see an inventory of the systems that are out there, and their funciontality, and then we can evaluate if there are things that we can use, with out any development at all.
I’m sure a process analysis would be very useful, thing is, we don’t have any proceses, as we dont’ have any thing set up yet
Shit like that. it was sorta fun.
in the end too, the fucker left my biz card on teh table, ms. brilliant took hers with her, but he left mind, I couldn’t help but think it was an insult, like slapping in me in the face with his TPS report coversheet or something. my client contact finally said “don’t forget jefke’s card, you’ll need his contact information”
maybe it’s time to get out of consulting.