Leah Nedderman: The Rock Star

Murphy’s Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

Today was ground zero for the configuration & deployment of the PPI Software Data Tool. Dubbed by the programmer to be the day “his Frankenstein was brought to life.” The day reminds this former BSA of so many prior implementations when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Yet, between the one England-based programmer, one LA-based BSA, a Toronto-based project manager, and a determined & dedicated Social Performance Manager in Haiti, this baby app is getting liftoff.

Mind you, the day started ROUGH! Neither Leah, nor I, was able to access the Internet when we got into the office. That meant having to ask the IT department to come look at our connectivity. **Sigh** Every IT department I have ever worked for is an intimidating schema of jargon, miniscule protocols that must be followed, and individuals with techno-arrogance up the wah-zo. This one is no different. Add a language barrier and you can imagine the sighs when we realized the problem. But, this is not going to be a story of defeat. No! This is a story of amazing successes. Despite broken connections, fragmented conference calls, and a failed attempt at a launch – this baby is coming alive!

The tool’s primary purpose is to capture MFIs client’s progress out of poverty -- a lofty goal itself. Yet, it reaches well beyond that. The tool works for MS Office 2003 and 2007 (SP 1 and 2). It accounts for dumb user errors like clients with mis-spelled names, validation of required/optional questions, customized scoring per MFI, push-of-a-button import/export of data, multi-lingual support and layouts, multi-regional date formatting, multi-profiles for various security permissions, and more! Combine that with the fact that it was written in VBA using Excel as a front-end and MS Access as a back-end, and programmers -- you should be impressed at its abilities.

Yet, what was most impressive today, was that a good majority of the configuration work was completed in a matter of a single workday. Leah and Nigel translated the entire application into kreyol (yikes!), set-up the Poverty scorecard statistics for the analysis, set-up surveys, and we managed to train the supervisors on the use, execution, and benefits of the tool. These tasks along would often have been delegated to AT LEAST 3 teams of people (trainers, administrators, analysts) and given several days to complete. Yet, Leah, with her can-do spirit, rallied us to press on and complete these tasks for the upcoming “All Heads On Deck” training with staff from around the country tomorrow morning. Frankly, this woman should get a ten-gun salute for her hard work of today and dedication to get ‘er done!

I look forward to working with her tomorrow to see this baby get rolled out. And I have every intention on making sure that it gets supported as it takes it’s first baby steps into the world.