The Dry Run

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

From left to right, this is:

Sam - Hardware technical guru, excellent public speaker and general lovely man
Me - Business analyst, fifth wheel and two-faced b*gger
Corrie - Project coordinator, super-efficient and smart as a whip
Jason - Microsoft specialist, network specialist and super-genius

We visited our two Christchurch offices today for what has been termed the "Dry Run" basically to test changing Christchurch office room names on Outlook WITHOUT blootering existing meetings in those rooms off the system WHILE supervising the putting up of signs and posters AND at the same time hooking up a test video conferencing unit to the new superfast network designed by Jason to see if it works ok.

So essentially, a mini-implementation ahead of time to test things out and if it all went TU then (relatively) easy to resolve. 

Because I am me, I left time in our implementation plan to do the resolving and... 

...excuse me... just one moment... I'm getting news here... yes, yes I can confirm that Sam and Jason are already FINISHED. 

Bloody hell.

So today was a successful day. The lads achieved more than we had hoped in quick time; the few problems they encountered were either minor or not actual problems. 

Holy sh*t.

I had very little to do. I marked off tasks as complete, though I struggled to keep up, things were happening so fast. I got coffees and pizzas. I schmoozed the Christchurch staff and I pretend video-called the lads when they asked me to.

I was quite proud of my schmoozing though. There were a couple of ornery b*ggers in Christchurch I had been warned about. I gave them my EXTRA SPECIAL attention by which I mean I Hugh Grant-ed it up to obscene levels. 

Totally worked. 

They all love us now. 

I don't care if they pimp me out. I HAVE NO SHAME.

In the evening the four of us went out on the town and I worked very hard not to drink too much because the idea of feeling like a bag of &rseholes tomorrow is so unappealing. We had a fun time and found ourselves at a yum cha place which is the ideal spot for food sharing and b*llocks-talking.

As for Shenée, she was bitterly disappointed not to be there. I could tell she was envious because she got on a video call about progress and WOULDN'T GO AWAY. There were lots of, "Sooooo ahhhhhh anyway.... great... ummmmmm... sooooo..." while she tried to think of another excuse to keep us on the line. 

She was very happy. Honestly, I never thought, "just adorable" is a phrase I would ever use about a project manager ever, but Shenée was so happy. She made me pick up the laptop so she could wave at Jason and Sam while they were rigging up the kit.

I've been a part of many implementations in my time. I don't think I've ever seen one go as smoothly as this. This lot are a-may-zing.

S.