Delivery: The Wait, the Pain, the Pleasure

As the very first delivery sign-off mails for the project I have been working on started flowing in this morning, I was reminded of my initial days on this project. When I was the sole individual sent as a consultant to the client site to ideate and…well…consult.

And I realized that it has been exactly 9 months—almost to the day—that we are delivering the baby. The baby called Online Training Program.

Literally and metaphorically, this has been a delivery. Beginning with the conceiving and nurturing of the idea to going through the ups and downs, the moments of self-doubt and conviction, the pains and pleasures, the highs and the lows, the good days and bad, the excitement of the new as well as the dull monotony of the daily executions that are integral to all deliveries. I could see the baby taking shape, waiting to be born, the parts coming together one by one to form the whole, and yet the waiting was excruciating at times. The regular health checkups (read status meetings :)) were painful.

But, as the first sign-off mail appeared in my inbox, my heart did a flip. The pleasure of this delivery is equally intense. I can see the fruit conceived from a seed planted nine long months ago. A seed brought to fruition by the collective effort of a team that has worked together, argued, fought, laughed, blamed, shared the blame, passed the buck and taken the onus, cribbed, encouraged, joked when things got tough, laughed when exhausted--in short, a team of warm individuals who will always be very dear to me, very close to my heart.

This post is a shout out for the team, for the project, for the time we shared together...