Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Strike That. Reverse It.

I was sooooooooo excited about my latest work project. We were going to convert our financial systems over to our parent company's system. It was going to be a full-year project. We were going to take our Senior Vice President of "I'm in the middle of everything" out of the picture for month-end closing activities. (Not eliminate him, just no longer have him be the single point of failure.)

We brought in a consultant who, in previous engagements, successfully conducted conversions to the system our parent company uses. She was just starting to understand our company's lingo, if you will, and make some productive gains.

Yesterday evening, around 5:15, I get the e-mail:

Subject: Ding, dong!

If you've ever been at a company where they FINALLY terminated that awful employee, or transferred them to another department, you know what that means. It means the awful horror is gone, as in, "Ding, dong, the witch is dead!"

I really didn't need to read the rest of the e-mail. Knowing who sent it, and to whom it was addressed, I knew. My project was terminated, thwarted, stopped, permanently delayed.

Shazbot!

Talking to the parent company yields one set of reasons. Talking to our CFO and CIO yields another. I got better info from the grapevine from a peer who is working on other projects to integrate our systems with our parent company's. It is likely a case of not enough planning, then realizing that the conversion is, um, "bigger than a breadbasket". It was not like converting from Money to QuickBooks. The approved funding would not be enough, and would be better spent on another project.

So, that's the "strike that" part of the post.

I also had to tell our consultant and her recruiter that her services are no longer needed at the end of the month. She only started two and a half weeks ago, and was starting to make good progress this week. I hate that stuff; so does my boss. I called a face-to-face meeting with the recruiter to let him know what happened. Yuck!

I then had to call my systems administrator in Florida, and let her know the project wasn't moving forward. She is an expert with the current system, but was looking forward to the cultural change of everyone moving to a new system, and being educated by professionals on the right and proper way to use that system. So much for that. She and I convened today, figuring out how to make lemonade out of lemons. Only time, patience, and a swift kick in the pants to some of the Finance staff will tell if our ideas will be successful.

In other words, I am back to where I was in October.

That's the "reverse it" part.

Now tell me, without using Google or any other search engine, YouTube, or Wiki (or anything of a sort)...in what movie is my post title used?

5 comments:

Jane said...

I'm going to guess, and I may be wrong, but was that from the 1970's Willy Wonka movie?

I seem to remember Gene Wilder saying that.

Rick said...

Jane,

You got it!

Rick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
GDAEman said...

Wow. roller coaster ride. Had my own this week, on top of getting over the flu.


Context: I work for state government. We reorganized last year and THAT was a roller coaster ride, out of which I came doing pretty well.

Tuesday, one of my best and brightest took a job for 25% more pay (the state pay scale sucks... we're basically a training ground for consulting firms). The next day, I get another resignation letter. Fortunately, this was a "ding dong" in the good sense.

The problem is, we have a hiring freeze.

Life goes on.

Rick said...

GDAEman,

That stinks. Due to our being acquired, we are growing in other areas of the company, but IT must remain at its current size. More work, less time.

Same old, same old. Sigh.