And the Big day... Go-live

I stayed last night in the hotel court yard. Naveen asked Jenna and myself to stay back in the hotel as it was too late in the night. slept around 1 AM and woke up around 6 AM. In the office by 7:30 AM. Anxiously waiting for business users to arrive. People started coming in. By 8:30 AM most of the users were in.

Customer service started taking calls by 9.00 AM. users were so nervous. calls took much longer than the usual. we are (Deloitte team) all over the place. Helping CS, Sales, pricing, shipping , operations etc. Dave brought the pricing issue to my notice. It took me a while to debug the issue and found that the issue is due to date parameters at database level.

Oracle sales guy was also there. He bought pizza for lunch. we didn't have time to eat Pizza . finished lunch in 5-10 minutes. Things became crazier post lunch. 3-5 PM is busy for customer service. Call wait time was 10 minutes at one point . Abandoned calls were increased.

Not many shipping ssues(we realized later that we overshipped 120k worth of products) and we were able to ship like any other day. we had team meeting of 6 -10 PM discussing over issues and action plan for concurrent jobs torun in the night etc etc. Had Pizza again for dinner and went home around 11:30 PM.

While driving back home from Twinsburg to middleburg heights in GMC-Terrain car on I-80 at the speed of 80 mph, I got the time to recollect what happened over last couple of days. It was sense of satisfaction that we made it. The fact that we were able to import orders from Web, EDI without any pricing and freight issues and able to ship 100% on day1 is big achievement . I felt so happy. It was my project, It was my design and it was so satisfying to see users clicking on the forms designed by me.

No one in the project team know that It is my first project where I handled from the begining to end.

Go-live : Day 0

I got a call from Naveen around 6.15 am saying Open so conversion is running slow. I talked to Anant as well. Reasons for slow ness is not known. I told Anant to not to kill open SO.

Got ready and went to office. Every one from Deloitte and MIS in the office by then. Meeting started by Dan. Everyone was busy eating bagels. We started smoke testing by 9:30 and had some issues with SOA. Ran AR receipts conversion and gather stats. Went to Burger king for lunch with Karuna and Rahul.

Jeff, Ameya and Bhupesh came around 2 PM . Jeff was there for 30 mins and left. We were preparing for smoke testing at 4 PM. Everyone from business came and started smoke testing around 4:30 PM. Order interface from web, EDI and EP was good, had some issues with pick release . Pawan made quick fixes to make it through. We realized that we can't ship as the CMS calendar is not open for sunday. They took lot of time to ship manually .

Worked with customer service to resolve some of their issues. Also, fixed credit card issues with Bobby ,Karuna and Jenna. fixed all open so issues. Disabled all the inactive ship methods and completed other cut over activities.

Overall great day . Left around 11:30 PM and went to stay in the hotel Fair field inn.

Go-live : Day -1

29- Jan -2010: Saturday : Reached office by 8:30 AM. Had conf call about the status, so far everything is on track (All Friday night every one from client team worked for closing legacy system and data extraction). We are supposed to start loading into Oracle at 10.00 AM. We got all the files by 9.00 AM. Rahul started validating customer price lists with the help of Anant ,we found some duplicates. Asked Steve / Elaine to fix the duplicates and re-extract the data . They gave another file at 11.00 AM. meanwhile we validated other files customers, sites, relationships , on hand etc.

Naveen brought Lunch from Chiptole. Jenna, Karuna and Bobby were also there. Jenna and Karuna were helping Kevin to enter new items.

We again found duplicates in customer price lists. Steve / Elaine working on that . It's 12:30 PM but they haven't figure out about the duplicates. I proposed to start loading customers and deal with the fall outs later, to save time. Everyone agreed.

We started loading customers at 1 PM ,it finished fairly quickly at 2 PM. We have the new file of cusotmer price lists by 2 PM. We loaded that and followed by On hand . It was 5 PM by the time we finished Customer price lists, customers and on hand. We almost catched up the lost time.

We fixed the fall outs from all the above conversions and closed sales orders started around 6 and finished by 8 PM. Had dinner from Pad Thai (Duck joke) and I started Data collection in net refresh and EP sales refresh program. Everything finished by 9:30 PM. Karuna fixing Vendor contract errors and was waiting on that to finish before starting open sales orders. Meanwhile Rahul loaded open purchase orders and me, Rahul and Jenna worked on fixing open SO errors. we made lot of changes to data to make it work.

Around 11 PM , Karuna found some issues with Vendor contracts and she was in discussion with Kalyani to fix those. I was waiting for those to be fixed. Around 11:30 Naveen, Bobby and Jenna left home . Rahul left around mid night. I was still waiting on Karuna. I started to load some vendor contracts with Karuna to expedite the process. At latst around 1 AM we started open sales orders and I drove back home and went to bed at 2 AM.

I was excited and it was a great day.

It's all happening in August...

Really, never thought so many good things happen in a month. First, I met Prabodhan in Chicago ,enroute to SFO . Met Vijendar and Swarupakka in SFO ,almost after three years. Met another Engg. classmate after eight years.

Got U.S. Bank Account, Credit card in a week. got first U.S. Pay check , 125% bonus in India and hike in U.S. and India , S.S.N in three weeks and started driving in U.S. in less than four weeks . Everything happened just as per plan. This is simply great feeling.

I'm loving this place. Really . If there is any place, that I would like to work apart from Hyderabad, that would be Bay area. I rate this place much higher than other cities I visited so far.

Ten Incidents that changed my life

I read rediff very often and I like stories which they present in slides like 10 best cities, 10 best airports, 10 tips to save tax etc. I thought what would be the ten things that changed my life ,starting from my birth to my son's birth.

Here we go.

1.Dad's Decision: After two daughters and one son ,everyone in the family suggested my dad to go for family planning, but It was my dad's decision to have second son. So, here I'm ,in this world on Jun 1982 .

2.Bringing up with Bapamma : I spent most my childhood with my bapamma (father's mother) and she is one of the best persons I've seen in my life. She is very intelligent and hardworking . All my childhood I was assisting her in whatever the work she does . I was like her assistant ,starting from brining her purse (not exactly purse, it's small bag ,stichted with old clothes ,which she used to keep for her money, tamalapaku ,sunnam and jarda) to carry corn in gulla after they were kept in the hot sun for the entire day, to take washed clothes to outside etc etc. She loved me so much and she used to tell I'm a very good and listen to almost everything she told me and never troubled her. I think my understanding nature has seeds from her.

3. Joining in Kamareddy school : I went to informal school in Kankal, till fourth class and my dad thought of me to send to Kamareddy for better education. I was sent to Kamareddy in Nov 89 to study class five, at the age of seven years. This has seeds of better education and taught me to staying away from family. I still remember I used to cry every day and when I saw my dad one day in hostel ,unexpectedly , I was overjoyed. I still remember this incident and probably this is one of the happiest moment in life.

4. Dad's cry : me and my brother (four years elder) studied in same school, same class till 8th . The school got closed when we were in eighth class. we didn't go to school for the half time in eighth . In the summer (Jun 93) when we went to write entrance test for joining other school, my brother failed in the entrace and principal suggested my father not to continue studies of my brother. I passed the exam with good marks. Just coming out of pricipal's room, my father cried. I saw my father's crying for the first time. He cried because my brother can't continue his studies. He had lot of hopes on us. It was shocking to see my father's crying. I decided then , I will study hard to make my father happy. This was my inspiration to study hard. Whenever I scored good marks, my dad used to feel happy. He used to keep my mark's memo in his pocket and showed it everyone he know. I never let him down.

5.EAMCET1997 - Rank 3744: I joined in Maharajni college in inter first year and this college was shut down in half of inter second year . I joined in another college after one month gap. Physics lecturer suggested me to go to hyderabad for short term coaching for EAMCET . We went to Shalivahana college in Madhapur (It's same Madhapur where we have hitec city now) and I studied very hard for 1.5 months and wrote Eamcet. I didn't have much hopes on the exam and told my dad that I might need to go for long term coaching . My dad denied when I told him that it costs around Rs30,000. On the result day, I was disappointed. I went to college to meet the lecturers and there I had seen in the news paper that Narayana gives free long term coaching for candidates below 4000 Rank. This is the big turning point. I studied very hard in Narayana to get 159 rank and got Computer science seat in C.B.I.T and got placed in campus placements etc etc. Had I not got 3744 rank in the first attempt, I wouldn't have joined Engineering for sure.

6.GRE Preparation: Ravi started reading "Word power mady easy" in second year of Engineering and I got introduced to GRE at that time. I started preparing for the same in third year and wrote the exam on May 10 ,2001 when I was in third year second semester. I got decent score 1980 with 540 in verbal. Coming from a telugu medium background that was good score and I got admission good U.S. schools like ASU and KSU . The vocabulary I learned as part of GRE helped a lot in my career. It helped me to get selected in campus recruitment , in understanding clients business requirements , reading English novels etc. that was a good decision to write GRE ,though I didn't go for U.S for M.S.

7. Prabodhan's factor: I was introvert, shy and had inferior complex and not used to talk much as a child . Spending time with Prabodhan helped to talk more ,not to feel shy for simple things and now I can say I'm not an introvert, if not extrovert. It helped to form my own personality , own likes and own dislikes.

8.Oracle Job: I joined CMC in June 2002 and spent there for one year before I joined Oracle in Aug 2003. Oracle job changed a lot. First, I stopped the idea of further studies, then I worked with Order Management which has good demand outside, I bought my duplex house during that period and appreciation of house helped me to remain in India even though all my friends are in U.S., then helped me to join as functional consultant in consulting which is fulfilling my dream of staying in India close to family as well as roaming around the world at company's cost.

9. Vijendar's factor: Being with Vijendar for almost four years in college, two years in reddy hostel as roommate helped a lot on how to retain friendship. I've the seen the best of friendship in him and I learnt a lot on how to keep in contact with friends from him.

10.Being Dad: I'm the first one to see my son entering this world, what a wonderful feeling it was. The touch of kids is wonderful. when he was four months old, he used to play with legs and when I put my face around that place, it used to be a gentle massage. What'a feeling it was. It reminds of my childhood as well as it increased respect for my parents. All the first time activities of my son (first teeth, first smile, first walk, first tonsure, first words) are wonderful, once in life time experience.

There are so many incidents that changed my life but these are the best....

After three years....

Today , I decided to write one blog post ,at any cost. I was going through some of my previous posts and made me feel good, nostalgic and happy and wonder how lazy I'm to not write anything for three years , which I enjoyed doing for almost two years.

To continue from where I stopped, I got engaged in Jun 2007 , Went Czech Republic for six weeks,got married in Aug 2007 , Went U.K. in Nov , dad was seriously ill ,so had to come back just after 10 days and next three months was meeting lot of doctors, spending lot of time on dad's health and then in apr 2008 ,on the same day when I first saw my wife, we got to know that we will be three .

Moving on, started CSA in Jun 08, worked hard for first two months to setup, then joined this Big 4 consulting firm, went to U.S. in Oct08 and back to India in Nov 08 to see the delivery of my son in Dec 08. Back to U.S in Jan 09 and returned back in Apr 09 , enjoyed seeing my son grow, his first smile, first crawl, first teeth, first steps ,first words amazing... he calls me Daddy very clearly......

I had this chance to travel to Finland for three months, I took my family but they couldn't adjust and sent back after one week of stay.

After three years, here I'm , in Helsinki , in Sokos hotel ,Flamingo ,Room 1225, which has beautiful view of the city. I'm missing my son a lot . on the other hand i'm enjoying my time . I've hell lot of time for myself. I've the time to read the books, browse the net, watch videos on youtube, facebook/twitter and IPL .

As my son growing, i'm growing professionaly too... I'm still unable to understand the politics of the organizations ,not that I wanted to. Professional life is taking me all over the world. Next week i'm travelling to Paris, Geneva, Interlaken, Luzern, Zurich and Berlin for six days. I'm excited.

Good and Bad news

Good news is that I'm getting engaged next month and bad news is that I'm travelling to Czech again ,hence missing out crucial courtship period.