Saturday, April 5, 2008

Team Building Exercise

Rejoice Comrades!

I just got back from the most marvelous of Revolutionary team building exercises. In it, we set ourselves a short term objective and then worked together to achieve it. The most remarkable part of this was how simple and elegant a short term project can be.

Yes, Comrades, we were handed a simple statement of work and asked to execute it. In a flash, we drafted a communications plan, took a list of our stakeholders, listed the milestones and work necessary to achieve them, built our team, generated buy-in and off we went.

Sometimes, Comrades, it is good to escape the day to day pressures of helping to project manage the Revolution, and work on something so simple and immediate. The Revolution may very well take our whole lives (it may, I can't tell you how long, remember, I can't share the top level Revolutionary milestones and dates to prevent our competition from preempting us), but that doesn't mean we can't do something right here and now.

Ah, yes. The exercise. Well, it was exercise in the sense that our blood was pumping, adrenaline flowing, and laser lights flashing. It wasn't an exercise in the sense that the lasers were live and we lost many comrades. Rejoice Comrades! They shall live on as martyrs to the Revolution!

In related news, we are pretty sure that we've rooted out the last vestiges of our AI running the HR department. We hope to have the new computers in soon. Well, Comrades. It seems that even when you try to include everyone in the Revolution, sometimes not everyone will make the cut or want to participate, or won't try to go on a homicidal rampage through the Revolutionary Headquarters taking over all the computers, robots, and electrical appliances...

Rejoice Comrades! We shall be moving to a new HQ soon!

Monday, March 31, 2008

Possible Revolutionary Change Request #5 or is it a Revolutionary Suggestion?

Rejoice Comrades!

Though it is still in the preliminary revolutionary deliberation phase to determine its official status, I felt that you should be kept abreast of this latest development so that you can continue on with your Revolutionary work. While this is still in the information gathering stage and has not been approved into a change in the revolutionary baseline, I thought that since the impact 'could' I repeat 'could' be quite significant (though we won't know until the full impact assessment portion of the request comes through, if indeed it does happen to be filed.

Ah, yes, Comrades, you are asking what could this absolutely portentous and monumental change be that would warrant such an early communication out to us all? I shall tell you.

The suggestion, which is the only place that it stands for now until the proper revolutionary change request documentation is filled out and filed with the appropriate authorities came from Comrade Anonymous asking for the Revolution to consider a change in the Official Revolutionary Nomenclature from 'The Feds' to either 'The Man' or 'The System'.

I tend to object to 'The Man' on the grounds that it is exclusionary and denigrates 'The Woman' or puts some type of sexist spin on the objectives of the Revolution, so I can't decide between using 'The System' or 'The Feds' or some other term that would adequately capture what the Revolution's objectives are.

Luckily, I am a Project Manager, and don't make decisions of this sort, or of any other kind except to manage the Revolution to the baseline configuration of the revolution, which includes the terminology...

Yes, Comrades, I suppose I shall have to wait for the Revolutionary Change Request to be filed and for it to be approved by the Revolutionary Change Board (and in this case most likely the Leadership of the Revolution given its scope), and I shall manage to that.

Rejoice In the Power of Process my Comrades!