A day of nothing else but LIFE!

Posted on October 31, 2012 by ThePMJournal

9:00 o’clock. In the kitchen, three people are drinking coffee:

-I really do not understand how you are so calm when you know we all are going to be fired? How can you remain unaffected by the situation?… asks me the Project Manager of R&D team.

-I don’t know, I am used to… I lie shamelessly.

-In my sleep, I am dreaming to find out a solution! continue my colleague.

-Maybe you will also write down your solution in sleep! urges, with a slight irony, COO.

The fourth man appear in the kitchen. He pulls me away and ask me:

-Do you know the functionality you gave me yesterday? Well, I don’t see its purpose! Why do we want to do that?

It follows 30 minutes of debates, another 30 minutes of convictions, an entire hour to convince a single man about the importance of one damn functionality. If I would lose each day, one hour for each man, to convince him about certain features, I will go crazy, but that’s my job as a Product Manager, to offer vision. After one hour, he concludes:

-My opinion, this feature is a shit….

-Then we won’t do it! try to settle COO.

Based on COO’s opinion, removal of a feature is the most “efficient” way to simplify the scope of a product…

I read the latest email received today. One of it is a message of good bye from one of the best consultants of the company, which happily announce his resignation… During last two days, there were at least six “good bye emails” and seems all are trying to say:

-Run while you still can! Abandon ship! The vessel is sinking…

COO consider these messages being part of “normality”. People are asking me worried:

-What is all about with these emails?

-Don’t worry, it won’t affect us! I tried to calm him down. (At that moment, I had the information other departments will be dissolved and will follow a collective dismissal).

16 o’clock. Suddenly I got sick and left home.

I receive a phone call from one of my friends:

-My wife just has born!

All at once, I forgot about all my personal problems:

-Congratulations! Behold, is the greatest news for today!

In front of miracle of birth, all the problems, projects, all fretfulness seemed unimportant. A new being enters in the cycle of the most important PROJECT from portfolio of humanity: THE LIFE PROJECT.

Life, as we know it, is an atypical project, similar to a supreme program or portfolio of humanity, for we work each day, year after year, until we die. In front of this majestic project of life, the other projects pale.

Although no one knows completely the objective of the imposing project called “LIFE”, everyone works at it unimpeded, without pause. It’s a miracle, how such project as LIFE, with a such huge scope, with so many undefined objectives, runs for billions of year without interruption.

How many projects you work for could last in front of The Time as LIFE PROJECT itself? Therefore, in the face of project called “LIFE“, I worship!

Following: Modern Times.

Previous: A day from the life of a Product Manager.