Reviewing documentation on a work day evening
With apologies to Robert Frost (and a colleague who shall remain nameless).
Whose work this is I think I know.
He hasn’t done a good job though.
He will not see me over here,
reading his drivel pure as snow.
The cleaners must think it queer
that I’m still working, though midnight’s near.
Between you and me – it’s late,
on the darkest night of the year.
I give my poor head a shake,
and ask, “Why so many mistakes?”
The only other sound’s the sweep
of the vacuum cleaner’s swift intake.
Slumber beckons, long and deep,
but I have this job to keep,
And files to go before I sleep,
And files to go before I sleep.
Solvitur ambulando
I do most of my writing when I’m not writing.
Having said something so clearly contradictory, I think I owe you an explanation. The mechanical act of writing – what I’m doing as I tap out these lines – is obviously done whilst I’m at my computer. However, by the time I begin the keyboard finger-shuffle, I’ve already figured out what I’m going to write. Not just the topic, but much more. I know what I’m going to write about, the introduction and (broadly) how I’m going to develop the piece. The hard part – generating ideas and developing them – has already been done. What’s left is the easy bit; the actual writing down of things I’ve already thought through.
Where do ideas come from? Answering this would take me into the realm of speculation, well beyond my knowledge and experience. So I admit complete ignorance and leave it there. In any case, I’m more interested in finding ways to get new ideas, rather than figuring out where they come from.
So here’s a more relevant question: are there certain activities that assist in generating new ideas? For me the answer is a resounding affirmative: it is while I’m on my early morning walks that I get them. A writer told me that walking was valuable not so much for the exercise, but for the ideas. I didn’t believe her until I found the same worked for me. The ideas appear to come from nowhere (I refrain from using terms like subconscious, that I’m not sure I understand). I could be thinking about something and then, out of the blue, I get this notion which is completely unrelated to the prior thought. It could be just a phrase or a sentence, the mere inkling of a piece, but I can usually tell whether it’s worth pursuing or not.
Once the nascent idea has my attention, I start thinking about how I might develop it. I find it best to do this right after I get the idea, else there’s a good chance that I’ll lose the context in which I conjured it up. Consequently, I end up doing a lot of my idea development while still on my pre-dawn perambulation. The development phase also acts as a filter – if the idea is hard to develop, it probably isn’t very good. As a rule of thumb, if I haven’t found a promising development in five to ten minutes, the idea is probably not worth pursuing. However, just to be sure, I jot it down in a phrase or two (on my mobile, which always accompanies me) and come back to it a few hours or days or even weeks later. Often the second look confirms that the idea is good only for the garbage bin. Very occasionally, I go on to develop these further. My mobile memo pad is full of ideas that never took off.
I’ve stopped trying to analyse where the ideas come from – I’m just grateful that they do. My AM ambles are a double benefit: exercise and ideas. So, if you’re suffering from bloggers block you could try some strategies for overcoming writer’s block. On the other hand, you could try a morning walk instead. Solvitur ambulando – it is solved by walking.
Dr. Do-little
So you’re the hardworking techie who’s just been promoted to project manager. Congratulations and all that, of course, but I’m sure you realise that your new job has very little to do with your old one. Chalk and cheese or caramel and chilli are comparisons that come to mind.
“What’s that you say? You didn’t know?”
You shake your head. “They didn’t tell me,” you reply.
“Well, of course they didn’t,” I respond, and rush back home to continue this piece…
The transition from a techie to a project manager can be a difficult one. The biggest and hardest adjustment is this: project managers are responsible for a whole lot of stuff that they don’t do themselves. The best way to explain what I mean is through my own experience.
As a project manager I’m responsible for the success of a project although I’m not directly involved in the nuts-and-bolts of its implementation. I depend on the team for the latter. In effect, as far as technical work is concerned, I’m Dr. Do-little – I do very little (if any) coding or design.
So what do I do? The facetious answer is: I manage projects. To most people who don’t know what project managers do, this sounds like a Very Important Job. One in which I get to order people around, tell them what needs to be done and by when. The reality, as all experienced PMs know, couldn’t be more different. The following paragraphs should serve to illustrate just how so.
A lot of my time and effort is spent in ensuring that others can do their work unimpeded by obstacles of any kind – political, physical, communication-related or whatever. (Ah, I see that look of disbelief on your face now – but believe you me, it’s true.) Some examples of this include: following up with vendors; making sure that a developer has the stuff he needs to proceed with cutting code; resolving misunderstandings between developers or between developers and users, and so on.
Another aspect of a PM’s job is negotiation. Sometimes it seems that I spend entire days negotiating – with team members (cajoling… no pleading… with them to get the module finished by Friday, as they’d promised) or with vendors (to try and get them to ship the hardware that was to have arrived yesterday) etc.
Finally, because I’ll be the first one out of the door if the project fails, it is in my interest to ensure things are on track. Here too, things aren’t black and white (or even red, amber and green as those wonderful traffic light status reports show) – they’re in several hundred fine shades of gray. A task can be late but still be under control. Even more paradoxically, it could be early but getting out of control. There’s way more to keeping projects on track than is detailed in status reports. You have to have an eye out for potential trouble, or project banana skins as I’ve called them in an earlier piece. For example, a task could have finished early because the developer wanted to finish it up before resigning – things are about to spin out of control and you’re not yet aware of it.
I may be Dr. Do-little in that I don’t cut code or do design. And although I don’t to a Very Important Job, I do a reasonably important one. Without my efforts, the project may well fail. So, to the novice project manager I say: welcome to the infuriating and frustrating world of project management. Remember, in the end – when your projects are successful – it can also be very rewarding.
Eight to Late 