My First Assignment

I started my first actual client assignment on Monday. I am staffed as a shadow at a firm in Dayton Ohio. Shadowing basically mean I’m there to do shit work and to learn as much as possible. This is a great opportunity. We are doing the blueprinting phase of the project so far we are just looking at how SAP works and how its modules interact with each other. The team is small and everyone is really friendly. I think if I can stay here for the next phase or two a will learn a lot (hopefully I will be able to start billing at some point). Even if the company isn’t that big and the SAP installation isn’t that big it is a great place to start and learn.

The senior consultant I’m shadowing is great. He has been working with SAP for nine years. Unlike a lot of people who are shadowing he doesn’t just give me a bunch of busy work. I get to work right along side him doing the analysis. It probably slows him down a lot because he stops all the time to explain things to me. This is a good thing because so far I only understand about 70 percent of what is going on at best. But they expect that. One of the consultants in the office told me you have to go through the process several times before you really get the hang of things. I only remember some of this stuff from training. I do think that I wouldn’t understand ½ as much though if I hadn’t had the vendor training so I am extremely glad the company sent me.

Dayton Ohio isn’t that exciting yet. So far I have only seen the client site, the hotel, the mall, Chili’s, and Wendy’s. I don’t have a rental so I don’t get to get out on my own. As I am not billable I don’t really think I will push for a car unless I can’t get to the airport without a taxi. If that is the case it would probably be close enough to the price of cab fair to and from the hotel that I could get a car. I really don’t have time to see anything right now as we are putting in some pretty long hours as we are trying to make a good impression and sell the rest of the project to the client. I don’t think that will be a problem the partners and the CIO seem to have a really good relationship.

Hopefully things keep going well and I get to stay on this project. I will certainly write another update after I have done worked on some more tasks and I have learned some more. Maybe next time I can talk more about the city too.