In Unsteady State

We made it through the "transition" and now on to the incompetence. Our outsourcer doesn't have enough work to do since we have little time to give it to them. Our lives consist of writing specs they won't understand, aiding them through processes they should already be familiar with by now and going to useless meetings.
They have given us a template to write specs in, but apparently there's only 3 areas in the template to fill out. To boot, they have their own internal template which they occassionally send back to us.
We write these specs and submit them at our weekly meeting. The next day they go to the governance board who either approves or rejects. Then they go to the outsourcer for estimation. That could take a week in itself. They come back with something outrageous. Then we bicker with them about it. That takes more time. Everything takes so much longer with them. After the estimate is approved by the governance board, it becomes a ticket for them. For when they have time....
In some cases, the outsourcers are overloaded with more work than they can deal with.
It's evident that they are out to make money. Everything becomes a long, major task for them.

The Fire Starts

As we come upon the last week ere the outsourcers take over detailed technical work, we find ourselves still giving them access to systems and walking them through processes and procedures that they have already been trained on. Their documents are close enough to what was given them, but are obviously not comprehensive enough for them to really understand their jobs. The new IT processes have been written, but not communicated. (much less understood) As we speak, people flock from the company. But what a fine time to have IT move to another unknown building and to change the email system entirely. What else can go wrong?

Frying pan or fire

Our fates have been decided. Some of us stay for a while, some of us stay longer. To stay and be a business analyst...is this a new opportunity or just a lingering of demise?
The brain drain continues as both outsourcer and outsourcee miss applications. So much to tranfer and teach. But will the hinderance of recording "KT" sessions continue?

Will Death come soon, please?

I've finished most of my brain dump. In fact, I absorbed someone else's brain dump since she was lucky enough to escape both the frying pan and the fire. I guess I'll have to do that one for her in the last partition since she's now left. What's funny is what's going on with a certain older technology. For some reason, our outsourcer cannot find anyone to do this, even though it was once quite popular. Maybe not in India though. In fact, when I came to this company in 1993, it was because of my skill in that technology (it was DOS based then) to order to write a payroll system. That payroll system STILL runs. (In DOS, no less) One other coworker has a number of larger programs in that technology. They can't replace him, so he and his set of applications are being pushed out till the last phase. Word on the street says that he will be given his severence package and asked to leave. The outsourcer will then likely turn around and hire him for his expertise, but there's no guarantee that his time with them will be lengthy. How ironic. Headlines: older technology saves tech jobs. And here, we were all racing to try to catch up to supported technology...

Outsourcing my brain part 12

Yes, I missed parts 1-11. I just LOVE "knowledge transfer". I spend hours talking about my applications just to 1) answer stupid questions and 2) correct the erroneous documents they send me. In addition to this, I have to attend meetings that seem to be sabotaging the company: process flow! Let's figure out how we can have NO ONE respond to a ticket in the most efficient way. I hope I get out of here before this, but at the beginning of next year, when annual, nearly unused processes are due, no one will be here to guide the blind.
Anyway, let's get back to "KT". Fun example from yesterday. I explain a VERY simple application. It takes a spreadsheet and saves it to 2 places in Sharepoint and archives it on the LAN. The question of the day: "So does this use a database?" It's a good thing this is done remotely. He really doesn't want to see the expression on my face as he asks such things.
Another thing I really appreciate about doing this is how I spread my applications across outsourcers. (not by choice) So there are some basics about the company, the network, policies, Marketing/sales knowledge that has to get repeated to more than one person. Only Grace has saved me from having to do this with multitudes.
But I'm not done yet...

VDI humor

I can only find this humorous because otherwise I'll become violent. The other day I was in a meeting. Several interesting personalities were present. Here's the plan: IBM counterparts will be present here and we're to help build them "machines" for them to be able to use with all the software that we use to develop. First, they want us to try to get our software packaged. We were told before not to do that. Company policy. Now they want to do it. Why? Because they want to be able to push this software to 2-3 desktops. How long does it take to package something? Months. How about we just give them the install instructions? Guess they'll have to settle. We want more info on these "VDI"s. (and I use the term loosely, because one character doesn't want us to use the word "image". He gets angry when we use that, so we call them "VD thingies".) In fact, contrary to what we were all told previously, there is NO image for these machines. Nor can one be made. Can someone else log in at the same time? No. So why aren't we using Citrix on a Terminal Server? Or Citrix published apps? Alleged "technology issues". (FUD alert)
Someone has a brainstorm: let's ask IBM what they normally do! Answer: the client normally sets up Citrix. Huh. No kidding. Why don't we do that? Just not the way we do things around here....

The start of the IBM disaster

Today is a kickoff of sorts. Within a month, we will all be spending 2 hours of our mornings talking to people in India. I hope to learn Hindi in the process.
What seems disastrous to me is this: The current structure has a manager and more than 10 systems analysts. The manager is a business analyst of sorts, but all the systems analysts are also business analysts. The systems analysts are slated to be layed off, but a small number will be retained as business analysts, assuming they are willing and available to do so. There doesn't seem to be any transition plan there. People will leave and take their business knowledge with them. Wouldn't it be more logical to either hire new business analysts and have them train now or to start transitioning people into business analyst roles now to absorb as much info as they can? Just not the way things are done here.

Software source

When we buy software here, we like to copy the CDs to the NAS for ease of use and in case the CDs get lost or scratched. This is pretty standard practice. Yesterday I heard an amusing story. One of our developers (and only one) is using an old version of Powerbuilder. When queried, she said that there was a version of Powerbuilder on the NAS, but that was not the version she was using. To make matters worse, she didn't HAVE the source for the version she was using. Apparently it had been corrupted. Her solution? Well, it lives on 2 of her desktops and a laptop. Let's all pray that nothing happens to those machines.

Outsourcing

Well, our company has been doing badly, so they decided to cut costs. First they cut a bunch of people, which just gave me more projects. That wasn't too bad because I like new projects. They cut the budget so that my future new projects got cut. Bad. Now, they decide that they are going to outsource our jobs to India. Nice. Good luck with that. Then they get rid of most of us and keep a few losers to be business analysts. Except that they can't figure out who's supposed to do what. Instead of asking IBM how they typically do things, they just decide to do things from scratch. So I'll either be spending the next half year teaching someone how to take my job away or finding another one instead. Monster.com, here I come.