Project Travel

Post date: 29-Apr-2009 23:30:29

This is the first time I've ever had to plan anything on this scale. On first thought, planning a 6 month vacation seems easy enough, I agree. But once I dived more and more into it, I kept running into roadblocks - scheduling, costs, timelines, logistics, people problems, personal and professional goals.

The more I get into this, the more I realize how lucky I am that I'm a project manager in my day job. Managing a project and managing our 6 month trip are really quite similar. Just as a project, our trip closely mirrors the normal software development life cycle. (Actually, when you really get into it, it's more like an Agile Development life cycle, but let's not go crazy here.)

The first phase is all about Planning. Serena and I sat down many times over the past couple years and really talked about where we want to go, what we want to do, what our goals were and how we thought we could accomplish them along our travels. We put together the initial concept of what we wanted to do, and when we thought we could do it. How long should we be in each country? Is two weeks enough? What about just two days?? Just like in the business world, this was a SWAG all the way and what we came up with was documented on the back of a napkin. On a +/-100% level, we had our funding estimated and approved.

Next came the Analysis. This is when we really dived into each country that we wanted to go to. I always wanted to go to Japan, but why? What is it that drew me there? France sounds cool....but what did we mean when we casually said "I want to go to France"? Oktoberfest? Sure, put it on the list! But if we're going to do this or that, what impacts does that have? If I want to experience drinking a beer during Oktoberfest, where do I need to be and at what time of the year? If I'm going to be in Germany in Sept/Oct, then where should I be before that? Where should i be going next? What are the trip requirements?

When I bitch and complain about my trip planning and how tough it is, I'm actually in the Design/Development part of the project. I'm bringing together travel agents to assist with flight tickets. I'm contacting the Chinese embassy to find out that I need to apply for their visa while I'm in Athens because it's only good for 90 days after they issue it and there's no way I can get it before I leave and have it still be valid when I show up at the border after hoping off the Trans-Mongolian train. I'm contacting a dozen different families from all over the globe to confirm dates, phone numbers and addresses of where I'll be staying in each country. This is all the actual hard work. This is also when last minute decisions can have huge impacts on the people involved, the costs or the schedule.

Testing? Hahaha....come on, what project actually does the proper amount of testing?? Next item...

Delivery. In a project, this is when the system goes live, or when you deliver the final product to the customer. For us, this will be the departure date. This is when we begin our trip around the world visiting friends and family, seeing new places and new faces, reconnecting with old friends and making brand new ones. This is also when the customer says: "it's broken, you're going to need to fix it." And we're expecting this on our trip, too. There will be problems. Visas will take longer. We'll miss a flight. Getting lost will be part of the everyday. You take it in stride and build in buffers in the schedule to allow for these known-unknowns (you know they'll happen, you just don't know what they are yet).

And just like every project, there are things that I have not planned for yet. Who knows what I'll be doing and where I'll be sleeping in Thailand during our second week after the hostel in Bangkok. But that doesn't stop the project. You make changes on the fly and decide what is best for the project to be successful. You fill in the blanks and go on gut instinct. We'll panic and we'll cry, but Serena and I have found one thing out being together for more than ten years - there's no problem that we'll run into that we can't support each other through. And knowing that take a lot of stress off our backs.