The Covid pandemic is widening in the middle of 2020. At that time almost everyone had to work from home, almost all crowd centres closed, including malls and offices.
Amidst an atmosphere of economic stress and an uncertain future, I cannot do much. Because I am overwhelmed by circumstances, I cannot work normally. At the same time, the condition of my company was unhealthy, because there were hardly any more projects. But that day, I got a call from an old friend, a phone call that changed my life.
On the other side, my friend asked me about technical things he does not understand, “How to integrate separate applications.” I know, he does not understand at all about the technical of computer applications, so I am trying to explain it in simple way. Unexpectedly, he asked me to come to his office tomorrow. I am kind of wondering why his office was still open during this raging pandemic, but I still decided to come to his office tomorrow.
The next day at his office, he told me generally about what he meant. It turns out he is undertaking an approach to a project related to a military institution, and he did not have the resources to carry it out. Since I was the only friend he knew who understood the IT field, he contacted me. He did not talk much about the project, but he asked me to do a preliminary survey on the project site. Because I was doing nothing at the time, I agreed to go with him.
A few days later, as promised, I accompanied him to the institution location. There, I encountered a few stakeholders who explained their requirements randomly. There was just a sheet of diagrams showing some separate applications to be integrated and some examples of reports they wanted. The rest is a discussion about my team’s ability to handle their requirements. Considering that we did not have any resources at the time, I tried to avoid a definite answer.
After that meeting, I finally realized, that my friend offered me to lead the project. Imagine, the project was large-scale, and at that time I did not have a team, had no resources at all, and did not know in detail what the application was going to do. But I cannot step back anymore. On the one hand, my friend has no choice but me. On the other hand, I also really need a job. And with this job too, it means I must leave my own company and join full-time in my friend’s company.
Long story short, I agreed to join him, with some conditions. At that time, I had already got a little idea about the application to be built although I did not get the details. I don’t know yet if there are existing applications, how many modules will be built, how many users will use them, the infrastructure available, and most importantly, the final application expected by the project owner.
I decided to focus on building the team first. Coincidentally, my friend had an acquaintance who introduced him to three young software engineers. After being interviewed and invited to the project site, two men were willing to join, while one woman refused. In the next story, I will tell you how this initial team got to work.