What two-weeks off can do for a man! It was hard to say today was only four-weeks from that Monday morning. This one felt completely different!
The progress during my time away made me confident that we had a mature globalization process. The government department’s documentation of Albonistan’s business practices was very useful. I wish we could get that everywhere we went.
Testing the prototypes, components and enhanced components had been accomplished. The translation was nearly complete and we were doing internal-user (alpha) testing. Our iteration management was very accomplished.
We had found a local data-centre for storage of country data and had also found the cost of connecting to our global Business Continuity Centre at Macchu Picchu to be fairly reasonable – if more expensive than usual.
There were slight problems with equipment that we needed. Smartphones were not yet available in Albonistan. But Palm (TM) devices were available and would be supported for our mobile sales-force.
The translation and integration testing were to be completed in the next 3 days. We could start beta testing on Thursday.
Deployment Testing and Launch
The ‘completed’ application started on Thursday for beta testing. We had found 15 colleagues from Albonistan in different departments to go to Albonistan to test the application. Five of our experienced integration and usability experts were also there to help manage the small problems.
It took 15 days to do the deployment testing. I was fanatical about detailed and painstaking testing. A stitch in time would save nine (or like nine-thousand). It had been a bitter lesson. I hoped my team would be smart and avoid the painful lessons of premature declaration of success followed by failure.
Seven weeks from the day that I first heard about Albonistan, we were ready to launch ONION there. My boss was pleased. This was a feather in her cap too. She encouraged us to use the time we had till the launch of our operations there to tie any loose-ends. It’s not as if I had to be told. | 
