Patsy

Suddenly, Buck started typing again.

Over two months had elapsed since his last post, and it was almost two months between that posting and the previous one. Many things had happened in the intervening four months. Buck was no longer stationed in a printer closet five floors beneath an ultra-secure super fortress, frantically documenting an intranet portal’s content in a painstakingly manual page by page process to prepare for a migration that may or may not occur in late 2009, by which time all the content will have drastically changed anyway. No, those carefree days were gone now and seemed but a distant, blissful memory of a daydream.

Buck struggled to find the words to describe his new situation. Where to start? Perhaps by giving his new role a name, one that would summarize, in a word, the core truth, the absolute essence of his role. And that word he chose was this: Patsy.

“Let’s do a little role playing,” suggested Buck to his readers. “Pretend you’re a level 3 Business Systems Analyst with armor class 8 and 12 hit points. Here’s your character sheet [he hands you a piece of paper with complicated-looking facts and figures on it. You notice that your charisma attribute score is rather low]. “You receive a new assignment: define a requirements management plan for a program that will ultimately span over a score of projects tasked with integrating two financial institutions’ systems.

“There are actually three financial institutions involved: the parent company, who is your client, and who we shall hereinafter refer to as ‘The Client;’ there is Bank A who was acquired by The Client previously and who represents most of the business; and Bank B who has recently been acquired. Three institutions, three cultures, three totally different ways of doing things.

“Bank A has already been brought into the fold, but they’re a little like the French after the Nazis took over: there are snipers everywhere. The Bank B folks seem amiable enough, as far as Italian mafioso go. The program you are joining will be integrating Bank B systems with those of Bank A.

“The program has no governance model; therefore, there is no guiding vision for how to decide which systems should stay, which systems should be merged, and which systems should be retired. There is nobody at any level willing to step up to the plate and make the tough calls. The top dog says work it out amongst yourselves; the smaller dogs are fighting for turf.

“The program does not yet have a team structure or project teams defined. There are no project schedules. There is no risk and issue management plan. There is no scope document, Commissioner. The requirements are already late, and the top dog has crammed his hand way up his ass and pulled out a date for when the integration itself must be completed. Then he flung it on everyone and it stuck. Working back from that date, you see that it is impossible. You mention this, but The Client never changes dates, so you ask for more resources. 'Prove you need them,' is the response, which you know is patently impossible without the twenty or so tightly coupled project schedules that have yet to be completed. So everyone is tense. The situation stinks.

“Your job: create a requirements management plan. You have three days. On the fourth day you will shove it down people’s throats at a huge meeting in a far away city. You will be the first speaker, going ahead of the guys who will be talking to the same crowd about team structure, project management, and risk and issue management. There are snipers everywhere who will not hesitate to sabotage anything suspected of being a structured process designed to hold them accountable for actual work. You have two hours to speak.

“You are walking down the corridor to the conference room. You round a corner and [Buck rolls a twelve-sided die] a gelatinous cube blocks the way and closes in on you! You can see the rotten corpses of its previous victims suspended in its ooze! What do you do?”

Except for the gelatinous cube part, that all happened in January. Since then, Patsy--, er, Buck, has been set up to take the fall over and over and over again. He checked the mirror just this morning and still doesn’t see a target on his forehead, but he knows it must be there, because everyone else can see it but him.

Sucker.

BSA / PM 101

Buck has been asked to create a tutorial for becoming a business systems analyst (BSA) or project manager (PM) in today’s corporate environment. Today’s blog entry is that tutorial.

Now, any BSA or PM who actually takes his role seriously will try to tell you that there is a huge difference between these two roles and that one tutorial can’t possibly cover both of them. These same people will try to tell you that serious, extensive training is required for either one and that a mere blog entry can’t possibly suffice. Buck, however, urges you to reject this point of view as the product of lost souls desperately trying to justify their existence to corporate America.

Before moving on to the easy 7-Step program for becoming a BSA or PM, Buck wishes to make it clear that this tutorial is equally applicable to consultants and client company employees alike. The principles are universal. He would also like to say a few words about his 7-Step program:

“Hi, my name is Buck 99, and I am excited to share with you my 7-Step program for how to become a successful project manager or business systems analyst. These best practices have been invaluable to me in my career, and if you studiously apply them to your own professional development, then I am confident that you will be successful too.”

Here are the 7 steps for Buck 99’s program:

Step 1: Weave order out of chaos.

Step 2: Know who your customers are, and anticipate their needs.

Step 3: Convince people who don’t want to do what you need them to do to do what you need them to do.

Step 4: Check your fonts, keep them consistent from slide to slide.

Step 5: Never let anyone do anything without an approved change control, and try not to be the approver.

Step 6: Memorize the corporate-speak terminology, and use at least one buzz word every 5 minutes.

Step 7: Suck up to the admin and see if you can get her to handle setting up the meetings for you.

See? It’s that easy! After that it’s just a matter of tracking everything that needs to be done in a clumsy tool known as Microsoft Project, and blowing about 10 hours per week (of what would otherwise have been productive time) creating presentations in Microsoft Power Point and tweaking them so they look slick and professional, thereby drawing attention away from the actual quality of the content they contain.

Any questions?

Weekends in Cryptopolis

Buck is in Hell.

It is Sunday morning, and Buck is buried beneath a ton of worthless bullshit work down in the supply closet five floors beneath the client's super fortress. He anticipates being stuck here until 8:00 PM or so. He was here all day yesterday as well. He is alone. The weather outside is nice: high 60's, sunny and breezy, but he can't see it. The oubliette has no windows.

Buck learned this past week that the information gathered through the intranet site content inventory task he is performing will likely be shelved until the 3rd quarter of 2009.

That's right: 2009. By then the content that he inventoried will have changed drastically.

Yet the deliverables must be delivered. The project must be completed on-time and under budget. The show must go on. Buck does not receive additional compensation for the additional hours he puts in. And as to the fact that a relatively simple program could have been written in 2 or 3 days that would complete in just 5 minutes what Buck has been manually working on for over a month now, well, let's just say the client is paranoid and strictly forbade it.

As you might imagine, Buck is just about ready to blow a fuse.

Happy Holidays!

Superstar

Buck was desperate for someone to invent a way to record his dreams.

Last night he dreamed that he had backstage passes to a music concert, although it was unclear who the headline act was. Several of his friends were there, on guitars and keys or in the orchestra pit, but none of them are musicians in real life. Although the music had an orchestral element, it was actually something closer to popular easy listening music with an exotic twist, like something Sting could have put together. Buck remembers thinking in the dream that it was beautiful music.

The composition was well-suited for improvisational solos from various instrumentalists. Buck recalls a keyboardist and saxophonist taking turns. These solos were nice but nothing profound or exceptionally moving, though they contributed well enough to the melancholy of the theme. Then Buck sensed a commotion behind him, a ripple in the atmosphere. A special guest star had arrived: the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Yes, Prince himself was making a surprise appearance!

Buck watched the superstar as he strode to a roadie who handed him a strange wireless headset instrument. The microphone extended from one of the earpieces like one of those telephone headsets that only a lucky few manage to secure in the Cubopolis call centers. There was also a wire extending from it to an odd-looking keyed instrument with which Buck understood Prince would use to augment his singing notes. He made a few quick adjustments, flipped a switch, turned a dial, and walked out into the spotlight. It was all very smoothly and efficiently executed despite the need for haste.

Buck worried that Prince was handling it too casually. The top of the theme’s cycle was quickly approaching while Prince made his adjustments and walked out on stage. Would he jump in on time? Would the other musicians see him there in time to hold back and give him the musical space he needed to deliver the goods?

They did, and Prince jumped in at precisely the right moment. The instrument sounded like an electric clarinet. His solo was simple at first, weaving concise melodic elements into the theme with sustained, clear notes, and only the most subtle trills and flourishes. Buck approved of the inauspicious opening, but for a moment he wondered if Prince was sufficiently prepared to pull it all together. Had he rehearsed? It certainly seemed improvised, and Buck could see in Prince’s facial expression that he was searching for something new. Certainly The Artist was a professional musician who knew the forms and wouldn’t botch it with missed notes and such, but would he be able to turn the solo into something transcendent as everyone hoped?

Then, around the fourth or fifth measure of the first cycle, after Prince had left a note hanging in suspense begging for a resolve, he kicked it up a single gear with a syncopated walk down the scale, the final few notes of which he bent and chorded with harmonizing notes. From there he smoothly transitioned into a higher gear and took it places that only Prince could take it. It was aggressive and masterful, yet not overwhelming, and it added a totally different color to the canvas. He had found what he was looking for, and it guided him into a second cycle and he soared upon its wings from there. And just when Buck was wondering what the next musician to solo could possibly do to top this performance, the band neatly concluded the song at the end of the cycle with a well-practiced ending, Prince’s solo tying in perfectly.

The crowd went nuts, and Buck was excited to have been able to witness it. Buck got to shake The Artist’s hand before he was escorted to his limo, then Buck helped the roadies pack all the gear. Buck also congratulated and thanked the other musicians, but everyone was still gushing over Prince’s solo. The dream involved a few wrap-up kinds of things before Buck finally woke up to find it was still the middle of the night.

At first, his mind still clouded in the delirium of sleep, Buck thought about what an awesome musician Prince was. Then consciousness slowly educated him. There had been no concert. Prince had given no solo performance. It had all been in Buck’s head. The theme, the orchestration, the solos, everything. He frantically tried to recall the main theme, but he only managed to pull half of it together. The second half kept drifting into a Duran Duran tune, although he couldn’t name which one. The Duran Duran number was a less perfect rendition of what Buck had heard in the dream, as if deep in the recesses of the unconscious mind there is a wellspring of pure, perfect music that isn’t accessible to the conscious mind. Duran Duran had once tried to attain that perfection but had fallen far short and missed the mark, clumsily adding elements and chord changes where none had been needed. Now Buck had heard the real thing, knew in his heart that it had been original, never before heard or successfully brought to life in the waking world of ordinary mortals. Yet try as he might Buck could not recapture it so that he might share it with the world.

Despite this frustration he actually smiled as he drifted back toward sleep, for there was one aspect of the experience that could never be taken from him:

That solo had been his own.

Has Buck Lost His Marbles?

“Buck searched everywhere, but he could not find his marbles.”

Buck was indeed questioning his sanity, based on recent events. On Thursday he pulled the trigger and bought two more ball pythons, a pair of genetic morphs known as “pastels” (or sometimes “jungle pastels”), and they were delivered Friday morning at 10:00 AM. What an exciting day that was, but it kicked off a stressful weekend both for himself and the snakes. To experiment with the narrative possibilities, Buck decided to portray the events from the snakes’ point of view.

The tale as told from BP1 (male) in the first person.

_________________________

Mmm, it’s nice and warm and dark in here.

Shit! The hairless ape found me! The light! The light! There’s no place to hide! Where do I go? What do I do? I know! I’ll curl up into a ball and hide my head. Maybe if I can’t see it, it can’t see me.

Oh no! It’s got me, it’s lifting me up, probably toward its mouth. This is the end, hope it’s quick.

That’s weird, it’s not biting me. Hey! It’s putting me into a really small place. I like small places, but I don’t know this one, never seen it before, and it’s kind of cold. Let me flick my tongue and get my bearings, maybe there’s a way out.

Crap, there’s no way out. Ok, breathe, just breathe, try to relax, stay calm, wait until later and make my break then. At least it’s dark again.

Hmm, there’s something new over here, something kind of warm making some heat over on this side. Maybe if I…can…just…squeeze…around… There! That’s better. Still kind of cramped, but nice and cozy. Think I’ll take a nap.

Hey! What’s all that bumping around for? Can’t a guy get a little sleep around here? Just what the hell is going on out there? Is the world turning upside down? Damn! I’m upside down but I can’t right myself because it’s too cramped. Wait, ahh, that’s better, the world is right side up again. At least, I think it is. Crap! It’s changing again! I’m so confused!

What’s that thrumming vibration I feel? Is something coming to eat me? I don’t see any heat other than this little warm thing over here, ahh that feels sooo good. No, the vibration isn’t getting any closer. I’ll stay alert, though. I think I’m well-hidden, but some weird shit’s been going down, so I’d better not relax.

The thrumming stopped, but I’m still being moved around. Bizarre! Hiding places aren’t supposed to move! Whoaoaoaoaoaoa wha-a-a-a-at’s a-a-a-lll tha-a-a-a-t b-u-u-m-m-p-p-i-i-ing a-a-r-r-o-o-u-u-n-n-d? Ugh, this can’t be good. Aaiiiiiii! I’m sliding down, down, down, hope it doesn’t hurt at the bottom and DAMN! Did I just go UP really fast and do a 360 flip with a twist? What am I, some kind of acrobat?

I can’t take it any more! Help! Help! Somebody help me!!! Oh wait, that’s right, I can’t talk. No vocal cords. This sucks!

Is this shit going to go on all night? I’m losing track of all the stuff that’s happening. More thrumming, more lifting. Strange smell I just caught, like I’m not alone in this mess. Maybe someone else is in here with me. I think it’s been there all along but I’ve been so confused I haven’t paid much attention. And by the way, what does a guy got to do to get a bowl of water around here? The service here seriously sucks.

Oh now THIS is some seriously twisted shit. I can’t put my little forked tongue on exactly what it is, but it’s like I’m climbing way higher than I’d ever want to go, and the air feels…strange. Thin, or something. And what’s with the pressure? Where did it all go? That ain’t cool, makes breathing a bit of a trick. Thank Set the Almighty for this little warm thing over here, because I get the feeling that it’s really cold outside.

Ok, just when I was kind of getting used to the breathing thing, it changed again. Everything’s getting thicker, have to adjust my breathing again. And I feel so confined! I’m not sure, but isn’t this the time of day when I normally do my exploring? I need to stretch out! I’m going to get a cramp! Argh! I hope this new home isn’t permanent.

Wow, that weird pressure thing went on for a long time. Now it’s back to more of what was happening before. More bumping and twisting and thrumming and rattling and thrumming again, lots of starts and stops and starts again, now the hide is moving quickly, I can feel it, and now everything is still. Still cramped as hell.

Everything is still and then, the world starts to jiggle a little bit. Something’s happening, something terrible. Have they found me? Oh no! The light! They found me! Nowhere to hide, no way to move away! I can see their eyes, there are two of them, more hairless ape creatures, more hideous than the other one, they have spots! They’re exposing the top of my hide, they got these things they’re reaching at me with.

Hey, look at that, I was right! They got another one of us! Ooh, she’s a cutie, I like the little heart tatoo she has on her side. Too bad we won’t get a chance to meet. Too bad we don’t have language or we could work as a team to get out of this mess.

Oh crap, it’s the same thing with all these apes. You get all tense waiting to get eaten, but for some sadistic reason they want to play with their food first. Ooh, it just gives me the creeps them touching me like that. It would probably feel good it I knew it wasn’t just them trying to get me to relax before they stuff me into their mouths. Hey, what’s that? A dark place to escape to? Ok, steady big guy, you only got one shot. Ready? GO! Slither! Slither! Slither for your worthless little life!

I’m going to make it! The ape isn’t stopping me! I’m in! I’m in the hiding place! I found an escape route! Oh and it’s so warm and smooth in here! And – oh shit! The hiding spot itself is moving. It’s…oh no. It’s hairless ape flesh. I’m hiding on the ape. It knows, it must. Yep, sure enough, here come the grabbing things again. Damn! Oh well, maybe if they don’t eat me now I’ll have another chance later.

HEY! What was that? A sudden flash of very bright light, like the sun. I don’t really like the sun all that much. Well, at least it didn’t stay. That was way too bright for my taste, and no warning at all. How rude. HEY! There it goes again. What gives? Will this never end? Will I never be released from this madness? Oh, whoa is me.

Now the ape’s grabbers are holding me and placing me somewhere else. Those grabbers sure come in handy, I bet, but then how do the apes squeeze into little places? Seems the grabbers would get in the way to me. Moot point. So where are they putting me now?

Ah, I see, it’s one of these larger places where I supposedly can’t escape from. We’ll see about that later. I know these apes, they sleep at night, and that’s when I’ll make my move. Right now, though, I’m feeling about as tired as I’ve ever felt my whole life. So, what’s up with this new scene? I count one, two good places to hide. And that’s interesting, there’s another one, but it’s unusual, feels like there’s a lot of moisture in there. Note to self: check out that place later on. In the meantime, this little dry hiding place seems warmer than the other one. Think I’ll slither in there for a nice long nap. Ahh, that’s much better. [Yawn] Hope they didn’t eat the babe.

Now, where’s the DO NOT DISTURB sign?

Salute

Little known fact: Jos. A. Banks makes excellent slacks. When a small volume of liquid hits the material, the liquid "beads up" into tiny, invisible droplets rather than be absorbed in a spreading, embarrassing stain. The droplets are then easily dispatched at the scene of the crime using readily available toilet tissue.

Buck salutes the good clothiers at Jos. A. Banks for thinking through the practical considerations of life in Cubopolis.

Grappling with Demons

Buck was wrestling with the old, familiar dilemma: how would he find time to finish the important things he needed to complete when his days were becoming jammed with frivolous pursuits that brought him far more enjoyment?

“Take this blog, for example,” he typed, worrying as he did so that he might not be ready for the client meeting tomorrow afternoon if he didn’t stop goofing off and just use his brain for a few minutes to think through the client’s request. “Clearly this is time that could be better served doing whatever it is Buck is supposed to be doing right now.”

What exactly that something was, however, was not immediately clear, and it was precisely that gray area that Buck hoped to avoid addressing altogether. The client had given him an assignment so murky that Buck wasn’t even sure why they needed him to do it at all. Analyze a proposal that they had already written, forming recommendations based on best practices that they had already decided to discard. Be prepared to talk about the proposed process which had, at its core, a requirement that people should be permitted to bypass it completely if they deemed necessary. This was the kind of non-sequitur that left Buck shaking in his loafers.

His manager was still nowhere to be seen, recovering from surgery, but Buck had been promised some guidance by close-of-business Monday (a promise delivered via an email sent from the manager himself over the holidays), so he delayed the analysis until the expert manager had an opportunity to weigh in. Never mind that the “correct” action as dictated by the natural laws of consultancy would be for Buck to perform as much of his own analysis as possible before he talked to the manager, thus ensuring good feedback come review time.

Meanwhile, just twenty-three days separated Buck from his certification exam date. “If Buck doesn’t use this time to address the client’s need,” he pondered in the third person, “could he not instead use it to prepare for the exam?” This was, of course, a fair and legitimate question, yet Buck had no clue why he was procrastinating the test preparation effort. If he failed the exam then his company would not reimburse him the $200 that he had already spent to register for the exam, an exam that would bring him a certification that he pursued by own choice. This was the key point: why would Buck delay something that would ultimately allow him back into a field of work that he actually enjoyed? Was he afraid of failure, or of discovering his limitations? Was he intimidated by some of his firm’s “techies” and their almost godlike IT skills? Or was the inverse true, and he was actually afraid of success? By becoming truly successful at something and becoming all that he was capable of being, perhaps in the future people would set higher expectations for him than he was willing to accept. In the final equation, was he afraid of responsibility?

The more Buck thought about it, the more disgusted he became with himself. He decided to quickly publish the blog entry before it dragged on, then he’d go on to post a question that he already knew the answer to on a ball python forum. A quick check of his email would come after that, and then he’d call the manager on the phone instead of waiting for the call to come to him. If he had any time remaining after that, then he’d do the analysis.

He could always study for the exam at home later that night. Right after “Heroes.”