totallyRED

Its that time of the month where highlight reports need to be completed. Tomorrow (the last Thursday of every month) I have a small (less than £100K) Project Board Meeting. When you have a large project and 9 small projects without any PSO support its a challenge to say the least.

It was funny today, we sent back a proposal with a decision for the business to make in prioritising 3 projects against this particular proposal. Rather than making the decision they started to blame IS for being late by a day on sending back the proposal.

The fact of the matter is this concept has been in circulation around the business since last November. IS got 5 days to do a project estimate (which is not an estimate as that will be the project budget) and they expect it delivered by July as its regulatory.

Isn’t it fair to ask for the business priorities when you already have resources working on other ‘business critical’ projects? It seems No, for the deficiency in the way the business operates it is always easier to blame others (especially if they are now third party). Where’s the NO BLAME culture? When will my customers learn? You have humans in IS not robots and ensuring you know what you want and when you want it in advance will ensure success.

However, it’s not all the businesses fault, IS have to take some blame. Stop bending over backwards and learn to say ‘NO’ this will ensure the business learn a valuable lesson in planning and prioritising.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

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From all the places I have traveled Jordan, Dubai, India, Morocco, France, Belgium and Holland this must be the second best place I have visited to date. The only thing that beats it is Mecca and Madina in Saudi Arabia. The views, the freshness of the air, words cannot describe it, was just amazing. Having lived traveled and worked in heavily polluted cities and towns it was a breath of fresh air.

We got to the town of Bangor, 20 minutes drive from Mount Snowdon Saturday afternoon. We had stopped at a beach on our journey down just to admire the beauty of the sea and for the first time see some living crabs. Damn, I did not know the United Kingdom had such beauty.

Thanks to Abi, a friend and his Tom Tom navigation we got to the hostel in one piece. However, we did see a poster supporting the BNP, which got a few people worried. The BNP in Wales, Labour get your act together.

We met up with the Birmingham lads in the evening, had a bite to eat (pizzas and b-b-q), had a game of football as you do, read our salaat and went to bed in the most uncomfortable bunk beds. Did I sleep, yes for 4 hours in total probable due to Tabz snoring bearing a close resemblance to a broken generator and ‘Ammmiiiiiii’ moaning of our Sri Lankan roommates. Also, waking up at 3.30am to read the morning salaat.

The trek lasted 6 hours in total with us reaching the peak between 1.30 and 2pm admiring the views and battling against the arctic conditions. We faced rain, sleet, snow and blizzard on the way up and down. Typical British weather, meeting all four seasons in a space of few hours. On the way down, we stopped for a warm cup of coffee at a place called the halfway house. Having battled the weather it was well deserved.

We met a couple who had done the trek numerous times and they mentioned

this is the worst weather we’ve experienced in Snowdonia

Just amazing, it is an experience I recommend to everyone reading the blog. Get yourself out there. Everyone just loved the experience and we are hoping to arranger a trip to Ben Nevis, Scotland later on in the year. Again, it will be to raise money for a local charity.

The amount of money raised will be on this blog once I have had the opportunity to collect it and count it.

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As a result of the new business setup, there is a team or bunch of individuals known as the book people. Who or what are they? No idea at all. However, it is clear that once IS complete the proposal it goes to a shared mail box, disappears for a few weeks and reappears at the demand side. This is getting absolutely ludicrous and hopefully this can be resolved.

From my point of view, not knowing what, whey and when thing will happen and not having any control of it is causing major concerns and is potentially a high risk to all deliverables on all of my 11 projects currently in development.

Time to read my prayers and ask for help and guidance from the all mighty.

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For the last two week I have spent most of my evenings planing for the trip to Snowdon. It has been frustrating gaining approval for the activity from the Al-hidayah board members, mainly because they are very busy people apparently. We got the approval on 11th May and so the fundraising has started.

We have had a great response from everyone we have asked. Some people thought we were barmy.

15th May was cup final day for my local team Savile Youth FC and we had a good response raising £50. However, my team lost 9 goals to 8 on penalties after a dramatic 3 – 3 draw after fulltime and extra time. Maybe, we would have raised a lot more if we had won.

Planning this activity has been fun as well as stressful at times, making reservations at the hostel, confirming who is coming and booking the transport. Lesson learnt – take a deposit from people who say they are coming. Otherwise there will be lots of last minute dropouts.

Before I forget to mention, a group of lads from Birmingham, with whom I use to socialise with when I lived in Birmingham for 2 years, decided to join us too. They were raising money for their newly acquired building for a Masjid is Handsworth Wood area.

To date, we have raised £250 for Al-Hidayah. Not bad for a week worth of fund raising.

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It has always been my ambition to help support local charities whom does such great work for the community and the wider area. As a Muslim it is part of the belief to help people what every their need (as long as it within the laws of the land and Islam obviously).

Recently a local charity have had a new purpose built building erected at a cost of £450K. The building is used for prayers, evening school and also a community center for the people in the area. It is intended that the building will be used to help children and teens in the area to get them off the street and give them a guide in life by providing homework classes and activity trips.

As a result, my friend Riyaz and I are planning a trip up Mount Snowden with a group of youths. Snowdon stands 1,085 metres (3,560 feet) high. The summit has 200 inches (508 cm) of rain per year, and can reach temperatures of 30 centigrade in high summer, and plummet to - 20 centigrade in the winter. Add to this winds of up to 150 mph and the temperature can feel more like –50.

This is our opportunity to do something for the community and Mount Snowdon seems a good challenge. I am really happy to be raising money for Al-Hidayah as I think it’s such a great community building specially built for the Caledonian Road Community and Atraaf.

The trek is taking place on 27^th May. We hope to raise £1,000 from this activity in the aid of Al-Hidayah.

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Recently our Mainland European owners decided to split IT services and the rest of the business up as separate entities. We went through the TUPE process and were advised work was well under way to start operating as two separate organisations.

However, in reality its not. The structure for demand and supply in principle might be there, contracts and SLA’s may have been agreed at a senior level but the supporting processes are non-existent. And who is affected the most from a development aspect, yes my team. As a small/medium project expert and at the forefront of change management a colleague and I have been given the task to provide proposals back to demand without any set way of operating (except a proposal document which is in draft – it is legally binding? Good question). Shaping the process as we see fit. It is a great challenge but managing existing projects and providing accurate costing and delivery plans without knowing if we shall ever get the work order is challenging to put it nicely.

In the long term I believe it will work. However, due to the influx of requests from demand without having the processes formally agreed or documented has left the development and test teams up in arms. I envisage it all working out and I am aiming to have all this formalised sooner rather than later.

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I am a Muslim Professional working as a Project Manager for a large multi-national company. The aim of this blog is to give you an insight into the life of a Muslim and a Project Manager. I will be covering the good times and bad (hopefully not many), the frustrations and the rewarding aspects of life. I hope to make it as interesting as possible and hopefully this will lead to you visiting on a regular basis.

Please feel free to make any comments you feel appropriate

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