Suck it up princess

Well, I haven't made it through the first week without getting a stomach upset, today is going to be a bit touch and go, but thank goodness we are working from the hotel today. All the travel guides have said its not a matter of if but when :). At least I wasn't the first one to catch something, I'm the second. It's not much of a problem, I'll mention it to the doc anyway though so he can keep records. No big breakfast for this brown cow today :)

One advantage of this is I am no longer sweating like I'm in a permanent sauna. The heat is quite welcome.

I feel privileged to be working in my team I'm in, these are very experienced IBM professionals, and experts in their fields. Amy from the US is a Marketing Manager, Peta from Germany runs the Daimler account, and Thiago (pronounced Jiago) from Brazil is a very experienced sales consultant. I might have brought some risk templates across, but that is nothing compared to how these people get the customer talking and opening up to us, and the targeted questions they ask that uncover all sorts of minefields.

Outside of work, it is encouraging to hear that worldwide everyone is having many of the same challenges as us, and I can tell you the focus on certification and reporting is no less than our own. But everyone also agrees, worldwide, IBM also are really good at looking after their people when needed.

Our day was spent going line by line through the master plan, identifying, and analyzing risks, building our risk plan. This was where the different backgrounds and perspectives we bring really outshine anything we could achieve as individuals. It's the same on any project, involving the team always comes up with a much better product. Unfortunately it's also the grind part of the job, like eating Brussels-sprouts, awful but very good for you. The team have come up with great risks, I hope our customer feels the same way. To ensure we are on the right path, we have developed a Work Breakdown Structure and mini schedule that gives us time to review a subset of risks with different stakeholders and set expectations before we publish our plan and perform our presentation, this will hopefully remove surprises.

I left the team early today to head straight to bed, I think I can kill this bug by sweating it out and getting plenty of rest. So I've taken a night time cold and flu tablet and am hitting the hay. I have Panadol, but I bought Panadol Extra which has caffeine in it - no good for night. Lesson learned - be wary of extra's, they my not be as usful as they claim to be.


- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Eight Rd,Accra,Ghana