Project Management: Olympic Gold

Forgive me today I am a little boastful but today the 27th of August 2004 was the Board mandated deadline for the delivery of our DW system - and we delivered....and within budget.

When we first started 6 months ago I got alot of push-back from my team who were understandably overwhelmed with the task ahead when presented with the plan - and said that we would never make the deadline.

I challenged them to focus only on the first milestone 6 weeks ahead at the time...and they delivered. We celebrated - then the second came naturally...

Only a week ago - I was appraoched by two of my team who said that although we were close - we wont make the 27th it would have to be the 30th.

Using the analogy of the Olympics I challenged them that they would get a 'Gold' for delivering on the 27th and get a 'Silver' for a Monday delivery...I asked them to go away and think about a solution...to their credit they found a solution. Man these guys are great.

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While writing this I just got a call from our Consulting partner who recieved the txt message that the system had gone 'live' whilst on the flight back to Sydney - he is 'over the moon'.

This 6 months has been such a great learning journey and I am so thankful to my boss and Project Sponsor for taking a chance on me - even though I lacked the technical experience and also for him mentoring me during some early political and leadership issues.

Can't also but think that God is with me on every step of my life journey.

I have now been given a new major systems project to manage...I can't help feeling as excited as Jack Aubrey did when he first got his ship in the book "Master & Commander"...it's such a big milestone your life - you want to shout it out loud...but no-one else (understandably) seems to care!