Mr.Boss, Mr.Interface, Mr.ODS, Mr.Staging

One Big Intelligent (BI) Family

Being in a small group has tremendous benefits and damn good fun. I have enjoyed such close bonding in all my projects so far right from Satyam. At one point of time it was just 2, me and manager who had been on project for over 3 months. Anyways, everyday going to work amongst these people feels so good and we all have hearty time no matter how hard the task is at hand lazing our assess off till late in the night.

We are the team handling the Business Intelligence part of the project hence the BI. Time for introductions (from L to R)-

• Williams Tapsoba – Mr. Boss – Ever so smiling, highly intelligent and man with large heart. He always says, in his French accent, ‘Alwais be hapi and kip smiling’. He hails from a country in Western Africa (Burkina Faso).
• Me – Mr.Interface - Good, happy going guy.
• Soufir Takarit – Mr. ODS /Mr. Coffee (which he hates and we love) – ‘Hey guy’ his oft-quoted phrase and a funny guy really. With such round shape of his head he has this habit of making a growling expression you gotta fall for it. Another fantastic person to work with. He hails from Algeria.
• Ilyas Brahmia – Mr. Staging – Another Algerian. He is a soft-spoken, humble and extremely hard working person I have met. He hardly sleeps for more than 4 hours a day and he is as fresh as a daisy.

This photo was taken at Pica Dino, an Italian restaurant, specializing in pasta and Pizza where our Boss had treated us for the good work spent on the project and deliverables. It was one amazing ‘Bologne’ pasta I had and utterly delicious pizza.

Forget the acronyms, its kind of inline joke and bit technical too. One of the best things that happen to us from time to time are the meetings. Meeting with our Boss with a schedule of half an hour means you ought to be ready for an hour or more. If it’s a quick meeting, you are good to go for half an hour. Actually he has this habit of repeating some of things he said two to three times that by the time we are out of the meeting we can recite every word of his instructions even in our sleep. So we can easily cut away 25 minutes of his half an hour meeting.

Well, not all the time anyway. I mean to say there are only some times when an half an hour meeting actually feels like half an hour, you see. That apart, we as a team are battling with forces beyond our reach. Its like groping in the dark for getting something out of nothing. As our new entrant Dave puts it, Garbage in, garbage out.

It’s a learning process really. I haven’t been involved in such stage before where we had to start analysis and design for a whole new product for which requirements are still in nascent stage. I enjoy being with these two blokes going to coffee breaks where we pass our time releasing our stress and having some language lessons.

One such lesson today and quite enlightening one at that – Indians have the habit of saying ‘W’ as ‘V’ which I found myself shockingly saying it involuntarily. So water actually becomes ‘vater’. It has made me overly consious now and I will put in all I can to overcome it. Thanks guys.

Note: Corrected after taking inputs from Mr.ODS a.k.a The Champ