I like to move it, move it... I like to ... MOVE IT!

Remember the song from the "Madagascar" movies?

Well...I sang that song for my career a short while ago when I moved from an IT Service Delivery role to a PMO role - Project Management Office. The change was intentional, long awaited & painful.

Painful?? Why painful, when it was intentional and long awaited?

Being in the IT Service Delivery role... the job was & is all consuming! Its a 24x7 roles where in you are on-call all the time. It was a job of constantly checking your phone for emails/alerts and be on top of things. It was a role of reporting to to two bosses in two totally different organisations. Working in a vendor organisation, you are responsible for the client's IT, by using your resources! Talk about resources, you are a full fledged HR manager for your human resources & constantly battling with the client and their emotions! Its creativity @ its literal cutting edge! Its a high that can only be described as what a woman feels when she is pregnant! There are some who cannot get over this high and choose to constantly be pregnant! I was in that fast paced, burning up, lack of sleep environment for a long time! Decided finally that it was time for a move....

Made a concious decision, planned my steps and told myself... I don't want to be pregnant any more ... I want the baby out and want to see it growing!!! I outsourced the care to someone else and moved on to working for a PMO! The upside is that it is a relatively peaceful (coming from my background) role, has a lot more structure and demands a ton more mature thinking!

The downside... post partum blues!!! To all those mothers... U know what I'm talking about! In the beginning, there were sleepless nights, waiting for the phone to ring! Constantly checking the phone for emails and waiting for the phone to ring! Don't have a team that would call me in the middle of the night and scream about a production server going down and half the world on the phone screaming instructions to resolve the issue!!

Nothing of that sort happens! Thankfully, I was weaned off in a gradual manner. One of the projects I took on as being a part of the PMO, required me to be on phone calls and meetings in the initial phases... gradually reducing in frequency! A few camomille teas a day calm the frazzled nerves to take it easy :)

Is the role not demanding enough?? Absolutely not! Its got more than its share of challenges. You have a much more diverse team. Your personal portfolio of experiences and projects expands widely! You not restricted to performing tasks in one segment of the industry alone! Give it a few years and you can boast of having worked on everything from business to financial projects, software roll out to software development, IT infrastructure deployment to outsourcing! Beleive me when I say this... its one of the best decisions I've made!

Continuing on... I like to move it ... move it... I like to ... MOVE IT!!