Quick History Notes

Growing his skills- Richard Tesmer led this period to expand his teaching and consulting skills.

Project Details

• Project Title:  Weatherford Database Optimization and Programming
• Methodology:  Waterfall
• Start Date:  03/09/1997
• End Date:  12/31/1997

• Project Team:
  • Project Manager:  Richard Tesmer, Speaker, Consultant, Project Manager
  • Team Size:  3
• Project Details:
  • Functional Reporting Team:  Marketing
  • Organizational Primary Focus:  Consulting

PPI received a "cry for help" from a long-term Weatherford manager, now abandoned at a pumping station surrendered by Oi Derriks.  He was assigned a project to take years of data and distill it from there into executive dashboard-level reports.  The straightforward ones he did with no problem.  The reset he couldn't do that, and his time was running out.

I was assigned to assess the situation and determine how much help he would need. My assessment—a lot! I figured he would need 20 hours per week for a month, split 50/50 between teaching and consulting. I needed to ensure he could take over himself after a certain period.

Week One, Day One, Monday.  It's a long drive out to the middle of nowhere.  But we are about to start something near and dear to my heart- mentoring and training.  He had chosen Microsoft Access as his database tool, which was a good choice for his needs.  I took him on a tour that first day and then set aside the last hour or so to work on one report.  I put that as the tempo for the next two weeks.  A few hours of learning, then an hour or so creating a report using the built-in Wizard tools.  He loved the tempo and the result. The second week continued the temp but is now reversed- an hour or so of training, with the remainder of the day working on his reports.  The trick was that I didn't create a single report; I had him create the SQL statements to generate the tables he would use and then the Report Wizard to create his layouts.  Again, he loved how much control he had and how his confidence was growing each day.

I made one rookie mistake. I forgot to show him how to back up his Access work, and yes, he deleted the entire database with all four works. Fortunately for him, he did this on the server, so it had a very robust recycle bin. When the file was restored, he was happy, and I was shocked that it worked as well as it did.

Week three was about management: backups, sol statements, using the SQL server and connections, using a network location for the parent file, and then creating children's files on local workstations. He turned out to be one of my best students ever.  That week just flew by, and I spent over 20 hours there, but he was happy to approve the hours.

Week Four was a tad sad. We both knew that this was the end of my assignment. We spent that week creating professional interfaces, security, and more logic than even he had asked for.

We also agreed that he would send me a copy of backed-up files at least once a week, and I would peruse them for any issues. As he requested, I would add more things to the backlog list every Friday.  This continued for six months until he was promoted" out of that office and back into our world with a new corporate office.