Yes, we do work too ;)
In fact, it's been so hectic that there hasn't been much free time to blog. I've been writing in the late hours. Photos take forever to upload, so I do it in batches when time and wifi allow. Today is a lazy Sunday for some of us. So rare! We'll go hiking on Mount Kigali later this afternoon. The rest have taken a day trip to Lake Kivu.
In the first week, Team Japan, aka Noriko and Naoyuki, gave each sub team a Daruma to wish us luck. It is a Japanese "doll" with blank eyes. At the beginning of a project, you fill in one eye. You fill in the other when the project completes. It is seen as a symbol of perseverance and good luck. Each member of our sub team filled in part of the eye. Good luck to us! Domo arigato gozaimasu, Team Japan! :)
Week 2 started out with our weekly review with the Minister of MYICT, our main beneficiary, at 8am on Monday. Government business runs from 7am to 5pm here. At least, that's what we've been told. Because they feel they have to run to catch up with the rest of the world. We tend to start at 8am or 9am. The Minister is very committed and wanted to hear from us weekly. We were glad that he could make time for us and were happy to oblige, because it was equally our intention to get regular feedback from him to ensure that we were on the right track. Very important when everything is condensed in 4 weeks.
We take turns presenting to the Minister. So this time, Kiran and I did. We shared what we found during our interviews and site visits (the As-is) and the outcome of the Design Thinking workshop. The Honorable Minister was happy with our progress. He wished that he could have been part of the Design Thinking workshop if his schedule had let him. "I wish I could have been there." In fact, he thought that it would be good for them to regularly organize Design Thinking workshops afterward :) This time again, he was very prepared. He had again drawn and written in his notebook additional thoughts for the dashboard that he wanted to share with us. I am impressed, every time.
Throughout the second week, we met with different folks at Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) - they regulate everything with respect to utilities (telco, water, power, etc). We also had various meetings with other folks from MYICT, including the Director General, ICT Advisors, and folks from the Planning department. Didier, the Director General was on vacation and had not been able to meet with us earlier. However, he was closely involved in the preparation of the Statement of Work (SOW) prior to our arrival in Kigali. So he was very familiar with the project and caught up on our progress. On Thursday night, we met with Didier again. Due to unexpected urgent work that came his way, our meeting got pushed to dinner time. It was important that we met with him that night because the following day was a holiday, and he is traveling next week. Our meeting occurred through dinner, from 9pm to 11pm or so. We were all exhausted, Didier included I'm sure, but it was a very good meeting. We showed the group's work on documenting the As-is process, the To-be Enterprise Architecture, and early wireframe explorations of the Dashboard UI. He was so impressed with our work so far that he immediately sent a text message to the Minister to update him!
Every time we met with someone, someone new was mentioned that we ought to talk with. It came to a point where we needed to realize that we had to go with what we had and start summarizing, designing, and reporting. Otherwise, we'd be here for another 6 months at least. It's a tough balance between the work being as comprehensive as possible to be useful and being scoped for and achievable in 4 weeks. Didier shared his expectation that our work should be comprehensive enough to be implementable, that they could not bring in another team to do additional consulting before implementation could happen. No pressure. Realistically, I believe that it will be somewhere in between due to the compressed time frame.
Our daily work is punctuated by lunch adventures. We try to try a new place each time. By now, we are all a bit tired of buffets, though they do tend to offer the most options for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. Of course, we tend to overeat at buffets. Thus, the post-lunch routine tends to be coffee or tea for Rodrigo and Bhuvana, while I struggle to keep my eyes open. Kiran seems to manage just fine ;)
At dinner time, we usually regroup with the other sub teams.
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