The first installment in a series on the bizarre company that is...

Hoopla, Inc.

By Dean Webb
Updated - September 23, 2001

Manager name: LaLa

Manager of my manager's name: Tinky-Winky

I started work at Hoopla after I grew tired of consulting. I thought it would be nice to settle down and work at a place where I didn't have to learn an airline's flight schedule in order to get to work. For the most part, work there was good. The people were nice and it wasn't all that far from my home.

Working for LaLa was a bit of a problem, though, as LaLa didn't have ANY project management experience, at least none that I could find, and had hired me for mine. At this point, I became a designated "team player", which means (among other things) that I will surrender my work to have my boss put its name on it and pass it off as its own.

The department I was in dealt with the LAN and servers at Hoopla. Most of the work at the time was putting out fires, but every now and then an actual project raised its ugly head and we had to do something about it. The first project I had dealt with rolling out antivirus software, which was a complete comedy of errors. The project was complete to some percentage, but what that percentage was was unknown.

The software that was being rolled out was a trial version and there was no record of which machines had it installed. There was no way to update it automatically or anything else like what was supposed to be in it.

So, I tried making headway on it, got frustrated, then got pulled to put out fires. By the time the fires were put out, the project was being completely ignored by Tinky-Winky and its superiors, so I was off the hook... for a
while.

Then, one day, I get called by LaLa to slam together a project plan, scope, and business rules for a revitalized antivirus software rollout. It would need to be ready for a meeting - the very next day - with Tinky-Winky and our security manager, Dipsy, and our new technologies director, Po.

>> Next... PART 2!