Keeping it going

Everything's gone sort of mental this week, and it's been a while since I had a proper rant so here it is. It's the first proper week of building the Irish project, and as I sort of suspected, it's taking the team some time to grasp the relatively complex concepts we're dealing with. Unfortunately it tends to come down to the business analyst to sort all this stuff out. Which is me.

Now, as I've said before on this blog, I'm not a natural business analyst. It's all about detail, translating business and functional requirements into technical tasks and so on. I hate this sort of stuff, and because I'm not naturally predisposed to break things out to the tiniest bit of detail, it's a bit of a struggle for me, and I'm convinced that I'm not doing a particularly good job. To be brutally honest, there are natural BAs in the business who could be doing this job much better. They're the buttoned-down looking people with lots of pens.

My natural role, as colleagues have pretty much mentioned in my reviews, is business consultant - the strategy, business modeling pieces which use my experience to bring context to the businesses we work with. This is where I'm comfortable - the fluffy stuff, basically. Delivering on it is one great big bore.

Add this to the fact that there's still loads of genuinely exciting stuff going on elsewhere in the business that I ought to be involved in, not to mention very real requests for help coming from colleagues involved in projects with very large clients, and you get one rather conflicted blogger.

However, I'm not blind to the fact that beggars can't be choosers and, particularly with a mere six months under my belt, I'm not in a position to go around demanding certain roles, and billable work is billable work. So, I'm buckling down and sifting through the billion pieces of detail that go to make up a website these days, answering the billion tiny (and some massive) questions that the development team have to ask, and all this until Christmas. There's another 5 months to go on this project, but frankly the that thought terrifies me.

So this gives me three weeks to engineer my way out of this and onto something more interesting. Watch. This. Space.

Back in Dublin

It's been a while since I was over here for more than a day trip, so it's weird to be away from my Kiwi again. This is slightly different though; we're running a workshop for a prospective client over here (all five hours of it) which isn't exactly a pitch but there are undertones of sales-y-ness there. It should be interesting.

The important thing, though, is the hotel. We're staying in a much nicer place this time, all old-school opulence and marble everywhere. The thing I think I like the most so far (having just checked in) is the quiet efficiency of the staff - me trying to check in with a Maestro card usually causes some fuss as they can't pre-authorise it, but here it was dealt with simply and smoothly. And they had chocolate brownies on reception.

So far, so good. Whether this means I'll be over here more in the future (on two Irish projects) remains to be seen.

Interesting thing just happened though. Last week, the head of my team mentioned that there would be a bit of a reshuffle within the team, and that I'd been put forward for one of the more interesting and high profile roles within the new structure. Excellent. This forms part of the proposals all the dept heads are putting together for their own bits of the business next year.

Today though, I've been told that there's a new part of the business being created, and that I've been earmarked to be part of that team. Controversial. So there's a decision to be made fairly soonish. Politics to consider. I think it's going to come down to 60% what do I really want to do and which route would get me there quickest, and 40% who do I want to piss off the least.

An interesting challenge. Fortunately I have a little time to consider my future. Watch this space.