31 May 2007
René Nossin
Take away my aircraft, buildings and everything, but let me keep my people.
We will just start over and be successful again.
This statement by former Royal Dutch Airlines president Sergio Orlandini
embodies a pleasant style of management.
Yes, an airline needs aircraft, but the core are people.
When employees are humming their way to work and back to home,
things are all right.
Enthusiasm is the most important critical success factor.
Bizarre projects
René, you supervised a quite number of my impossible projects:
Interface CARGOAL - FDC
using Freight Status Update messages
| Edifact Rule Database Maintenance
in cooperation with Swiss Air, British Airways and Software Alliance Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur
| CHAIN Cargo Hub Advanced Information Network, BAA and BSD
|
Automatic Queue Processor (AQP)the pioneer expert system for cargo reservations
| Special Cargo Queue Processorfor animals and perishables.
| Flight RunnerPrices for cargo space using predictions
|
All these projects were a joy to me.
I did them with great enthusiasm.
Especially the
artificial intelligence projects went smooth.
Those projects used
Smalltalk,
using the at the time revolutionary
Object Orientation.
The cargo sales department was thrilled.
The AQP alone gave a rough 60 million extra annual revenue.
Flight Runner added an odd 20 million.
What a way to go!
You gave me the opportunity to do my own project acquisition.
The acquisition was very successful.
Soon, enthusiastic users were queuing up.
Circus Master
René, you must have had a hard time being my project leader.
- I could not bother less about concepts such as overtime and office hours.
For example, the AQP project finished just before deadline, being Sunday night at 11:45 pm.
Hurray, 15 minutes slag time!
- Soon I was playing games with bureaucracy.
Deliver new software, even before the official request for was registered.
My personal record for a new application was shortened down to just 2 hours.
My product were nicknamed "underware",
software that comes crawling towards you
even before customers wrote the official request.
- The underware spread through the cargo warehouse like a fire storm.
Official bureaucracy could not cope with the speed of my object oriented software development.
So in one of my official quotations I included an optional surcharge for incredibility,
just to slow down the project a bit.
I could not stop laughing when the bureaucrats just accepted the surcharge!
So, for the sake of delivery on target deadline, I went on holiday during that project...
- Outsiders found my way of working rather chaotic.
Colleagues called my desk "The Swamp".
Well, I do admit it was a slightly deviating structure,
with a good parallel view on several concurrent projects,
appreciated by just a few.
Complaints by the cleaning department were way over done.
There were bits and pieces of my desk visible.
They could have cleaned those.
So, I guess you had to smooth quite some matters with bureaucrats.
Thanks a lot, from the bottom of my heart.
Looking around me, I saw fellow team members humming along, happy at work.
Some of them were quite special characters.
René, you have once heaved a sigh:
HJ, look, I am not a IT project manager around here, but the Master of a Bloody Circus.
An this whole circus is giving a damned good show too.
How in earth is this possible?
Freedom and trust
Well, yes, how did you manage to run the show?
The book
In Search of Excellence
was at the height of its popularity.
It describes similar chaotic scenes behind the screens of fortune 500 companies.
The book nicely matches the words of Orlandini.
Give your best people freedom and trust to excel, have success.
I do not know if you were reading the book at the time.
You might just as well have been a co writing it!
So yes, René, you were a master of a circus, but one with an excellent show, with top acts.
This was no coincidence.
Success never just happens.
It takes quality to attract quality.
Happy landings
With your style of project management everything seemed to run without effort.
You were a true master of successful delegation.
Nossini Airways could hang in any sky, all projects just kept on running.
When Cor Schrama screamed
Nossini Airways has landed
through the corridors of the KLM software development department,
it sounded like a happy welcome.
Yippie, our project manager is back in town, but leave him alone for a while.
He is still recovering from his last journey.
Royal Dutch Airlines is history for over a decade to me.
Yet I still look back with a smile.
It was a good time.
In retrospect it was the perfect preparation for my life as entrepreneur.
Enjoy your retirement René.
Should Nossini Airways ever land in Malaysia or Australia,
please knock on a the door of a local SUMit software development dependance.
I shall welcome you with all honours and will be happy to arrange some accommodation for you.
An of course you are also very welcome at
SUMit headquarters.
Nossini Airways 3105 prepare for next take off on runway 07.
Many happy landings!
Till
next nut,
Nut