The Sacramento community meeting was a nice break from the daily grind. Being my first community meeting, it was also a crash course on the business we’re doing in Northern California.

I spend pretty much all of my time at the project (CCSAS), so I experience what could be called tunnel vision from the outside Accenture world. Client dedication like this has its obvious benefits; it creates a sense of ownership and belonging, provides structure to my career, and refines my skill sets.

These past two weeks, I have found myself constantly operating in “crunch time” mode, as our project is coming to a head. We have rolled new prices out in 16 departments, and are in the final stages of executing prices in four more. When the project started in August, we were to execute prices in 10 departments.

What does this mean… to the client, to Accenture, to me as an analyst? I have to say, I am so excited about all the work that has been done on this project. The “crunch time” is entirely worth it to know that I have gotten to see this through from start to finish. I have been able to build great relationships with the client project team, and I see where the extra work is significant. Doing the job required is not always enough. We learn this even in college. The changes we created here, will inevitably spur the need for additional work down the road, and when the client thinks of whom they want to help them achieve these goals and objectives, I want them to think of us. Relationships are a key foundation of succeeding in business, and “doing the job required,” instead of “going the extra mile,” does not always leave a lasting impression.

A heads up for all of you job seekers… Here’s something you should know before your interview this month!

Yesterday, Accenture announced our second quarter earnings statement, which reported that our revenue is up 16% from a year ago. Every Operating Group and Geographic area is growing. We’re planning to significantly expand our management consulting practice.

What an amazingly busy week! We’re less than a month away from deployment now, so we’re all heads down in testing and defect-fixing. It is a tense environment, and as a tester, my responsibility is to go to the developer and tell them why the software that they spent so many weeks on is faulty. Then we work together to figure out where the problem is.

But the highlight of last week was meeting Accenture's CEO, Bill Green. He visited our project site, spent time with our client, and then gave the Accenture team more than an hour of his time after work. He spoke about Accenture’s developing areas, our hiring practices [both domestically and internationally], and areas of growth for the company. I was really encouraged to hear him speak about Accenture’s involvement in improving the ecological impacts of our and our clients’ business; having recently fallen into the category of millions of Americans who’s major understanding of global warming comes from Al Gore, I do wonder how massive companies can improve their emissions levels.

“Joey doesn’t share food!” The statement flashes through my head as my manager grabs a few fries from my plate one night. I smile as I remember that faithful Friends episode, where Joey is reluctant to ask Sarah on a second date, after she steals some fries from his plate. It was that point in our professional relationship, that I knew we were a compatible team.

It is said that the food we share provides clues about our feelings for those we share it with. Food creates a social tie among people. After all, we typically do not choose to dine with those whom we are not comfortable.

I’m off tomorrow to Accenture’s Sacramento Community Meeting! It’s my first one of these, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect. I promise to follow up with my thoughts on the matter.

And I’d like to thank Jackie for her dress and food etiquette tips. Without her I’d be utterly lost.

The three of us built up the NorCal Dinner Dance here on the blog, but never followed up. I feel like anyone who tries to explain how awesome their corporate formal event was could end up losing their audience quickly, so I’ll be pointed about it. Twenty-two-hundred people, tuxes, gowns, DJ and band, casino games, food (including chocolate fondue) and lots of libations (complete with ice-luge)! It was unlike anything I’ve experienced before, and was over in the blink of an eye. I can't wait 'til next year.

To build on Cristin’s humorous and all-too-honest list, our corporate jargon also includes these favorites:

• On the hook: adjective; some would use this to describe the location of a cricket or worm, but instead it means accountable for, as in a task one must complete.
• Bandwidth: noun; usually network traffic. Here it means free time an individual or team is available to do extra work they would normally not be responsible for.

“Clothes make the man.” I never put much faith in this statement until now. Some of the most brilliant people I knew, ran around campus in torn jeans and faded T-shirts, and sometimes even their pajamas. Recent events, however, have prompted me to re-evaluate my stance on this statement. After all, we hear time and time again, “Dress for the role that you want, not the role that you have.”

That being said, I have decided that it’s time to start dressing a little less like a college student pretending to be an adult, and a little more like a woman in the work force. Here are some of the tips that I have stumbled across through my research:

For those of you who’ve already been hired by Accenture and are eagerly awaiting your graduation date--this post’s for you! Here’s your crash course in consultant-speak. Imagine getting an e-mail like this in your Outlook inbox.

“Hi Cristin – I know you’re working on a deliverable right now, but would you ping me when you’re done? I want to reconcile these flows against our resource plan. I’m pretty sure that this department is out of scope for our current work order. Kate asked me to reach out to you about this, but you might want to circle back with Bob, in Change Management, to make sure that he reflected the changes in his deck. We’ll want to have a solid POV for the client meeting today.”

Happy International Women’s Day! I’m a bit late with my greetings, but it is only because I was off celebrating with co-workers. And by celebrating, I mean attending career-enhancing workshops, listening to authors and our district attorney speak, and meeting with current and past Accenture leaders to discuss women at our company.

And I feel pretty darn good about being a woman at our company.

Friends have told me they would go crazy spending all day in an office. Perhaps this is because the only hope for a tan is your CRT monitor or the fluorescents above. Or maybe it’s the cooped-up feeling of the office cubical, with nothing more than org charts and build schedules for scenery. Whatever the reason, I understand why a job outside the office is appealing.

Yet, I don’t mind it. The office is bearable for me because of several factors. For one, I share my cube with a small ficus plant named “George.” I haven’t decided if his name is honoring the late Beatle, the curious monkey, or the balding Seinfeld character. All silliness aside, George reminds me of one of my great life passions: the outdoors. Knowing that the weekend warrior in me will soon be unleashed keeps me in balance. Assuming it’s not a huge distraction, whatever reminds a cube-dweller of his or her passions is worth having around, whether it’s a picture of loved-ones, a Halo II desktop image, or George the friendly ficus.

If someone would have told me five years ago, that today, I would be living in San Francisco, working for a major consulting firm, and staffed on a project for one of the top consumer electronics companies, I probably would have laughed.

As a senior in high school, fiver years ago, I never would have pictured myself where I am today. I think I had decided at that point that I was going to be a nurse in a local hospital, married with kids. I was still very caught up in the small town mentality, and not quite sure of all the options that were actually available to me.

My life isn’t all Accenture and client work. Shawn, Jackie, and I have wide interests and activities that we engage in post-workday. It can sometimes be hard to fit in volunteering, time with friends, fun extracurriculars, and community involvement. But having a life outside of work allows for some good self-reflection and helps with mental and emotional health.

Last week, I attended an evening education session hosted by the Junior League of San Francisco. The topic was Communication Styles, and the presenter, Michael Cooper, was fantastic. Although I’ve taken several “personality tests” over the years, this was the first one that addressed my personal style of communication, ways that I become stressed, ways that I respond to stress, solutions to relieve that stress, and the eventual health problems that might result from my personality type. I found myself wishing that my co-workers and client counterparts could also take such a test and that we could share the results. Self-awareness is highly important in the workplace, and the “test” was a great eye-opener for me. Check out an unscientific look at how different personality types parallel, from Plato to Children’s Literature characters.

Now approaching my last two months of this pricing project, I am not only confronted with preparing all my transition materials in order to ensure a successful role-off, but I am being asked on almost a weekly basis, “Where do you want to go next?” Honestly, until now I have not really given it much thought. Most strategy projects typically last one to three months. This pricing project, being fairly lengthy in time, has enabled me to procrastinate thinking about the future until now.

I have never really worked for a company before where I have the option of where I want to go next, and what it is that I want to do. There was always more or less some sort of structure, or hierarchy that was the natural progression of the role. I am currently working on a project that falls into our Corporate Transformation offering. Other offerings include M&A Strategy, Strategic Due Diligence, Merger Integration, Divestitures, Organization and Strategy Design, Leadership and Effectiveness, Transformation Management, and Culture.

I thought I’d post while I wait for my database schema to populate with test data. I’m fixing a batch-related performance defect given to one of our busiest development teams.

Being flexible, open to new challenge, and ready to soak up knowledge are the best ways to guarantee success. Just because I’m on a system test team doesn’t mean I should only test. So I’ve taken on defects for various development teams in my spare time. I’m also helping plan a 2.1 SQT completion party, and I’ve picked up breakfast burrito duties on Mondays. Because of this I’ve taken on the name “Burrito Boy.” Titles like “Batch Boy” or “Defect Guru” have a nice ring to them, but both are much less entertaining. I'm glad people here have a sense of humor and don't take themselves too seriously.