Week 1 is over…the Client approved our Statement of Work!!!

Subtitle: We have a flight plan.

One of the RFDS pilots about to head out on a mission. (Photo Credit — RFDS Queensland)

So, it’s been a long week. We have spent the last week working with our partners, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, clarifying our Statement of Work. We are following the schedule and program defined by the IBM Corporate Service Corps. This was NOT that way I expected things to play out.

You see, we are following a prescribed process in which we are supposed to spend a week working with the client learning about their business and coming up with a clear definition of the project scope, objectives and deliverables. In all honesty I expected us to be able to knock this out in an afternoon. Boy, was I wrong!

Day one started out with a kick-off meeting and tours. Once the ceremony was over and my day 1 blog written we got down to business. When they told us that their business was complex I have to admit I didn’t think it could be THAT bad. After all, even though they’re divided into six sections, they’re delivering the same service so how complicated can that be? I went home at the end of Day 1 feeling confident and ready to take on the world.

Day two blew up my little world. It turns out that Australia, which is officially known as the Commonwealth of Australia, is a federation of six states and ten federal territories. The six states and the two largest internal territories are partially self-governing and they all value their independence. So, the six RFDS sections, which are each supported by different states or territories have different rules and regulations to follow. In addition, as non-profit organizations they each have other entities to satisfy from a metrics and reporting perspective. Finally, add the famous Australian pride of self-reliance and you end up with trailblazers who creating new and unique was of doing things. So, while the organization as a whole is clearly committed to supporting their clients to the best of their ability they each have a slightly different method for doing that. My brain hurts just thinking about the complexity of their model.

A screen shot of our group during one of our meetings with the client.

So, what is the objective of our project? We spent the remainder of the week defining our objective which we call a Statement of Work. We interviewed representatives from four of their sections along with their federation team and this afternoon, only a day late, were able to get the Client approval. In a nutshell, our project is going to be defining a way to best utilize the data that is generated by each section. We need to find a way to combine the data in a meaningful way and to come up with a process to efficiently gather the data from each section and then , store it, analyze it and provide meaningful insight back to the client. Oh and we have one week to perform research and one week to define a plan to achieve our goals. The final week will be working with the client to finalize our approach. Piece of cake….right? Yep, that’s my life

One of our remote client interview sessions. We have people from all over the globe on our team.

I should be worried, but having seen the quality of people that we’re working with I’m confident that we’ll find a way to do it all. However, I will admit that I have started drinking triple-shot cappuccinos! The side benefit of this is that I have no problem staying up late to blog. We have a busy week ahead of us.

Me helping to run a team brainstorming session. (This brings back memories of past assignments.)

Now, speaking of busy, I do have to admit that not all of our time is spent working. This past weekend I spent “a day in the country” and then a day at the famous Australian (Steve Irwin) Zoo. The weekend was a wonderful experience that is deserving of a dedicated post. (Teaser…holding a Koala was the highlight of the day.)

This week is going to be particularly interesting in that Tuesday we’ll be performing some community service at the University of Queensland. We’ll be meeting with some Engineering students to talk with them about careers at IBM. I’ve always loved to do this in the US and am really looking forward to an opportunity to go global. Here’s some more detail on that effort: https://www.eait.uq.edu.au/eait-employers-campus-ibm . I’ll be moderating a panel discussion for the students and then will be meeting with the students in small groups to talk about Data Science. Later on in the week, we’ll be running a Design Thinking Workshop to help refine the clients wish list. The fun never ends!

So, in a nutshell, the first week flew by and I’m looking forward to week two.

Ciao for now,

Steve