This Tuesday Cathy, Patrick, Ram and me were welcomed at the <a title="ALCS" href="http://alcs.ma" target="_blank">ALCS</a> headquarter for starting the initial phase of our project. We have to get an overview of their issues which the IBM subteam will possibly analyze deeper in the next few weeks. After a quick tour through their offices - while making notes about the IT equipment - Nidal explained us issues which they are having with their <a title="ERP Systems (Wikipedia)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning" target="_blank">enterprise resource planning (ERP)</a> system. It was a very informative but also tough session, as it was mainly in French (thanks Patrick for translating) and we didn't know much about the system before. Good luck we got Moroccan tea and Swiss chocolates as energy kicks. At the end of the day we had filled multiple slide charts already.

Next day we continued to discuss more of the IT related problems together with Karima and Kezna. Personally, the new topics suited a bit better to my experience profile. I caught myself normalizing tables in my head and thinking about an inexact search. As it turned out it was the same for Patrick and Ram (both having a strong development background)... fortunately, Cathy brought us back to the business side.

One promising sign that we understand our partner was the topic about the donor's database resp. application: during a discussion about ALCS' dream I was drafting a GUI (graphical user interface). At the end Kezna - pointing at my drawings at the flip chart - said: "Cela, ç'est mon rêve!"  (This is exactly my dream!) :)