Logging the Blogging Effort

Ok, this is big, so big that it is almost huge. Effort capture and estimation is huge in the industry, any industry, especially IT industry (ok, that's pretty much the industry I know, but faint thoughts of time study does come to mind, well never mind). So in the interest of all the hype where we are drummed till no end and the way we drum on the ones below us, and so on and so forth - the vastly important activity of effort tracking - never mind you are behind on your deliverable - fill in your timesheet, seems like recording, tracking and justifying effort spent on an activity actually takes more effort than the actual effort, not to mention recording, tracking and justifying the effort taken to record, track and justify the initial effort and so on and so forth... (see where i am going?), well anyways, this just happens to be the bread and butter of lot a many industry and people armed with specialized effort tracking tools and degrees, I have decided to track the effort taken to get this blog up and running.

Ok, so let's see the task breakdown: (Oooh this is another favorite topic of so called Project Managers... in other words overheads who run up the cost of the project - partly due to their huge rates, provide no valuable inputs and still run the project to the ground, over budget and over schedule)

The tasks:
1. Think of creating a blog ~ 10 seconds (the thought just came to mind)
2. Get online ~ 30 minutes (O, whenever I just have to get online, my connection just happens to have a "limited or no connectivity" and you thought my life is non-happening!)
3. Sign in – 10 seconds – ok this was easy, I just happened to be signed in to email and this just happened to be integrated – wow don’t u just love technology? (Though I do pity the plight of the “resources” working on the so called integration)
4. Ok, think of a Title – 30 second – it takes time to think… after all this is my window the world… or rather a window to me for the world… so I would like a pretty (sorry, witty) window (warning: stereotyping – gals like “pretty” while guys like “witty”, instead I chose something that is neither – just another example of lost in translation between “what is required” to “what is delivered”)
5. Enter the address – 10 seconds – Duh! It just flowed from the Title – after all it was put in place with a lot of thought.
6. Press – continue – 1 second and we are done or not – uh-oh, the site address is taken. Why don’t you use this (ugh what kind of an address is blah blah user name or some obscure number – how do I expect visitors to ever remember the address when I won’t!)
7. Go back to step 4… only it takes a bit longer, as I got to put in more thought…
8. Step 6 all over again… aarrgh…. I decide to check does this site really exist? I mean, I thought really hard to come up with the (as per me really pretty/witty unique title / address). Guess what a lot of people think alike…
9. Ok back to step 4….
10. And again….
11. Ok I stopped counting… this is getting frustrating….
12. Huh, “Address is available”…. Wow… I did it, I got my pretty / witty / sexy (Really???) blog site – or rather a totally obscure address… and a title to boot – time taken 3 hours! No wonder Project Managers hate these system constraints….
13. Write the blog? No wait, I got to explain the schedule over-run…. Which implies an exponential cost over-run… cause you see, even though I was the only one expending effort, the cost of the all the other “resources” including the super expensive Project Manager were also getting billed… after all they were dedicated….

So was this a waste of time and effort? No, not the blog, but the effort tracking – the title of this blog… (or are you lost in translation?)

- Ani

Written for “The 13th Thought”