Deve’s Blog

promotion NOUN

1 a move to a higher level in a company, institution, or sport
We try to fill our executive positions by promotion from within.
get/win/gain promotion: His number one objective is to get a promotion.
promotion to: his promotion to a position of leadership
2 the activity of encouraging or supporting something
A key element of his economic program is the promotion of free trade and investment.
The campaign is concerned with the promotion of health.
3 the process of attracting people’s attention to a product or event, for example by advertising
a ban on the promotion of tobacco products
the budget for advertising and promotions

See definition number 1…

“November 15th. I’ve seen this date so many times… but who knows why we always indicated the date of Saturday? We could use the one of Sunday, when they decide if it’s a go or not…”. This is what Alessandro, the main client representative on our project, said while looking at the data on the car radio as we were coming back from lunch break at the mall next to the Intesa Sanpaolo offices in Moncalieri.

Actually, it’s on November 16th that it’s been decided to give the ok to the actual activation of Banca IMI on the Target information system; and on Monday, the 17th, the user and client operativity on the new system.
But for us, IMI’s migration event has always been and always will be represented by November 15th, Maybe because Saturday (from midnight on) is the day were most of the work is done, loading on the Target system the data which comes from the old system, which is destined to be shut down. Maybe we liked it. Maybe nobody really thought about it.

Thus it is.

In the end, it worked. Not many doubts about the actual data copying from old to new, which indeed finished quickly, with just minor setbacks. A lot of fear for the online tests with users, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, but there were only a few errors, quickly corrected. Some last-minute unforeseen events (the “multibanca”, Roby! :rotfl:), handled without after-effects. Worry for the nightly batch jobs, which in the end went by quite painlessly.

And so great satisfaction of the client and of our bosses, with several congratulation mails (but no production bonus to be seen ). Personally, I can’t but note how, by working on PMO (that is, managing and organizing the project), it’s hard to feel satisfied or proud of the job done… because the “real” work was actually done by others, and your “pain-in-the-ass” job is appreciated by very few…

Well, anyway with banca IMI October and November were overloaded… and we got to December to realize there are tons of things to do for the rest of the project, and so after some deceitful evenings when we left around 18.30, we’re already covered in to-do activities…

Thus it is.

Or so they say.
Well, anyway my silence during the last week is caused, as usual, by work and tiredness…
Two weeks ago I’ve been all week long in Turin, and tomorrow I’ll go there again, this time for the third simulation of Banca IMI’s migration, which will be held in the weekend. Luckily, no working nights for me, thanks to my role of central coordination, but on Saturday morning I’ll have to wake up early in order to be up and running at 6.00.
In the meantime I got a good raise (+11%), which is always good.
During these weekends I just relaxed all the way, and I also managed to squeeze a Ligabue’s concert at Verona’s Arena, but I’ll talk about this later on…

Actually when I came back I found my usual place, but that was the feeling…

A quick post to say I’m not dead, I’ve just been on secondment in Turin for the whole week, to coordinate Banca IMI’s first migration simulation.

I like life on secondment. 4 stars hotel, breakfast, taxi, work, taxi, dinner out, hotel. And considering our working hours, there’s not much difference between coming back home at night and going to bed or coming back to the hotel at night and going to bed…

Obviously it’s all payed for, except for meals, for which there’s an abundant daily allowance.

I like it!

Again!

Well then, since May the 1st I’ve joined the magic world of the Stock Exchange, too! The Stock Exchange, this quite mysterious concept, about which my recurrent question is always: when everything at the stock exchange is screaming out “sell buy buy sell”, how in the world can they understand anything of it? A mystery…

Oh well, anyway, on May the 1st ended my first semester of ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan, during which Accenture duly held aside 10% of my payroll, and then giving me its equivalent in discounted shares… So here I am with my first 59 Accenture shares! And from now on, I’ll be connected on Google Finance to check the situation!

As you can tell from the sudden lack of new posts, I happily went back to work… I was welcomed with a first day characterized by a joyous accounting meeting and by finishing working at 10 pm… not to talk about Wednesday without lunch break ’cause I had to run in Milan’s centre for a meeting, with no one else from my team (good thing our client’s representatives were there, so they guided the meeting).

Better laugh it up here, with this awesome mp3… too bad that clicking “enter” leads to an error page, but it’s very likely that it’s expected to do that…

After trying to prepare a mini-hypothesis of a vacation plan, where I asked for the first week of January and my colleague for the last one of December, yesterday December 20th at 7.42 pm, as I had foreseen about a month ago, I was informed that I can even take two weeks of vacation, but keeping available to give a hand from home if exceptionally needed during the period I didn’t ask for. Too bad I really can’t do much of these two weeks now… I think next Thursday and Friday I’ll work a bit from home, to get ahead on what we have to do in January, and saving some vacation hours for (hopefully) better use…

Oh right, great scene on Tuesday at the project dinner… for a number of reasons I ended up sitting next to our senior executive, with my senior manager in front, and another senior manager of mine on the right… surrounded! No, just kidding, we easily chatted a bit about random things.
Well, then comes the question “so, where are you spending your holidays?” and the senior executive asked: “so, where are you going?” “well, actually I don’t even know when my vacation is yet…”

Yes, this is a true story lived by a colleague of mine, while he was trying to get back to Italy after a weekend in the UK… it’s awesome, I read it in the office and I was almost going to roll on the floor… in bold is the period during which our hero had no cellphone…

GO MARIO!

“It looks like my suitcase, it has a bent corner like my suitcase…”

SUNDAY

5.00 p.m. (u.k.)
It’s raining, water everywhere and in particular next to curb, with typical “british” humor a guy decides it’s a good idea to accelerate and drive next to me to splash me and wash me.

8.00 p.m.
The flight is delayed for technical reasons: from the rumors it seems like the pilot hit the finger as he was docking the plane. What is sure is that there’s a hole above the engine.

8.30 p.m.
The pilot comes out and, with a self-confident look in his eyes, says: “Yes there’s a problem, as you can see we’re taking pictures and sending them to Airbus in France, waiting for an ok, I’m confident”.
On the other hand I’m puzzled by the fact that someone, after seeing a picture, can sign off to let passengers tkae off, in particiluar because there’s a HOLE above the engine, so how do you know what happened inside!?!

(more…)

Everything has been quite on the blog lately… not enough time, and when it is the commitment to write isn’t, and Neverwinter Nights 2 is a drug… so let’s sum up.

During the first three days on the project I basically did nothing. I mean, I took some online courses (have to do them sooner or later), but my team (for the specific subproject in the context of the big Banca Intesa - Sanpaolo integration) didn’t exist yet, so I had nothing to do…

But I began on Thursday: the team is 1 senior manager, 1 manager, 1 consultant (they’re all nice and on the ball) and 1 analyst (me). Purpose of the project: realize the Master Plan (some kind of feasibility study) for the integration of the financial area applications, before October the 31st. On the first day we easily ended around 21, spending the day between a meeting with the client in the morning and a meeting with our Senior Executive in the afternoon… On Monday it was 22… and on Tuesday, too… Short deadline, lots of things to do, and a still partially cloudy situation… The next two or three days, though, should be a bit easier, but anyway let’s wait and see how things will proceed and what kind of contribution will be effectively expected from our team…