Day by Day

By most people's definitions, I am an Atheist. On a charitable day, some may classify me as an Agnostic. However, I really like the song "Day by Day" from Godspell. I also REALLY love church architecture. Go figure.

One of the first tasks I set myself today at work was to review the job postings. I saw a couple that I could probably qualify for. However, I am not so desperate to escape The Project from Hell to jump at anything, just yet. I actually have another group in mind, and I'm just waiting for the right position to open up over there.

My current unit team lead is a great woman. Personally, I really like her. Sadly, she has no spine, lacks skill in succinct communication, is habitually late, and is very disorganized. In my line of work, a lot of that is HIGHLY undesirable. Since she seems willing to live with me being imprisoned in this Project for however long it takes, I've decided that she is not the best manager for me. I need someone who is going to look out for the interests of her organizational unit and the overall benefit of her people as individuals. Having me continuing to lead The Project From Hell serves neither of those defined goods. Therefore, I think I need to find another manager to work for sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, I think I need to take my work life: "Day by Day"

Today didn't suck. On a scale of 1 to 10 it was, at best, a 6; at worse, it was a 5. I guess most days have to fall in the 4 to 7 range.

Here's looking towards tomorrow!

No first day .... just yet

Apparently, yesterday's post was premature.

I had my meeting with the CIO today. Everything went pretty well. We will probably restart the project with a formal requirements period, followed by a market study of available technologies (with the help of an experienced consulting group).

However, there are a few things that the CIO wants me to do in relation to the project in the interim. Also, when I requested that the renewed project be led by someone else, he listened to and agreed with my reasoning. But then, he said that he might not have anyone else appropriate to lead the project so that I may still be his best choice.

Fabulous. (grrrrr.....) I spent nine months leading a project that was completely screwed from the beginning by poor requirements and a 'team' that did not feel accountable for the success of the project. Virtually everything that 'we' accomplished was done by me or by much cajoling by me. The people who were slated to support the product after deployment couldn't be bothered to get involved with resolving any issues before deployment. They expected to be handed a perfectly configured and functioning product, that they had no hand in configuring. So, um, how did they think they would know how to troubleshoot any issues? ... Right.

My CIO assured me that everyone would be held accountable this time around and that I wouldn't be left holding the bag on my own.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. I've worked pretty closely with this cast of characters over the last year. I don't see how he expects tigers to change their stripes.

My unit team lead was in the meeting with the CIO this morning. She tried to give me her Pollyanna viewpoint afterwards. She thinks that after I take care of these final little tasks, that I'll at least have a few months to regroup and take care of some other things before the project renews. Also, she was very optimistic about the CIO's perception that he would make it clear to everyone that they would be held accountable for the success of the project. Sadly, she's very Pollyanna-like over a lot of crap that just ain't so.

Hopefully, the several month respite will eventually occur. During that period of time, I plan to keep my eyes on the internal job board. I work in a HUGE organization. There are a lot of IT-related jobs that are not actually in IT. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a way out before I get the albatross hung back around my neck.

The first day of the rest of my career

So, I have a big meeting with our CIO tomorrow to give him a status and recommendations on 'the project that flushed itself'. He kind of knows it's coming, so it won't be a complete shocker. I'm sure he'll say all the right things and give us our marching orders for reinitiating the project under better conditions once FY09 rolls in.

Everyone has done a great job of convincing me that this fiasco was not my fault. I'm also starting to realize that I'll be getting about 50% of my time back from this project to do all sorts of tasks that I had previously relegated to the back burner, things that really are important but I've had to ignore.

We'll probably have to do a post mortem on the project. We'll talk about 'lessons learned' and recommendations going forward.

I took today off to do some stuff with my son and to start regrouping my brain. I'm also taking off tomorrow afternoon. Come Monday, maybe I'll remember what my job was supposed to be before I spent nine months drowning in the project from Hell.

Waiting for the world to turn

The hiring manager at the hospital gave me hope that I might hear about the position by the end of last week. That didn't happen. The HR representative stated that it would probably be the end of this coming week. After not hearing anything, I really should have known that HR is usually closer to reality on these types of things.

I spent a lot of time this past week going back and forth about how much I wanted this new job to work out, and how I could make my current job into a better situation by trying to be an agent of change. My mentor really wants me to stay because she thinks I really can be an agent of change. I have a feeling that it's going to be an extremely tough up hill battle. There's a mantra that I have been preaching for over a year to any and all who will listen:

Policy, process, and accountability

In a large organization, such controls are necessary to instill order onto chaos, and to keep disparate groups on the same page. These words are alien to my current environment. It will take some doing to convert the masses to this way of thinking. If I end up staying, I need to find the energy to become an evangelist of these ideas. However, I really don't want to stay.

What is it about a frustrating work situation that makes one fantasize about their resignation. The primary element in my fantasy involves evocation of the magic three words above, and how I need to work in an environment that knows what the words mean and values their impact on the business. Plus, of course, a good measure of "I told you so." (as in: I told you not to make me the single point of failure on a number of critical system maintenance requirements).

Why do so many of us envision leaving jobs with the very adult and professional phrase of "Ninny, ninny, boo boo," on our lips?

Virtuous employee?

OK. The snow last night wasn't as bad as they were predicting. We had a little over an inch of crunchy heavy snow. We might get some more today, but it doesn't sound horrendous.

I got up at my usual 5 a.m. and, instead of getting on the exercise bike, I bundled up and went out to clean off my car (still a bit of a workout). I started the car up to thaw off its snow crust (the stuff that wouldn't easily come off with my large heavy squeegy-thing). Then, I went back in the house to shower and dress. I left the house at 6:10. The roads weren't that bad but traffic was excrutiatingly slow just the same. But, since I left early, I was able to make up some of that time on my normal backroad route. I arrived at work at 7:10.

Off to be a super productive employee! :D

Work vs. A Day Off

I have been really looking forward to this holiday, especially since I decided to take Wednesday off as well. I initially had planned to bake a pie and work on my final project for school. Now, I also have to deal with a plumber, who is putting in our new garbage disposal. And, I am going to pick up a second pie that I pre-ordered, because I knew I wasn't going to feel like baking two. Plus, I kind of want to go to the big liquor store and pick up a nice bottle of wine. I have a feeling that I am going to be more exhausted than if I had gone to work.

I had a boatload to get done today at work. And, amazingly, I got most of it all done. As a matter of fact, I was kind of feeling like I was in a productive groove. If I hadn't had an appointment I needed to leave for, I probably would have worked late. I am feeling a bit stressed by my big project, which is scheduled for cut over to production on Saturday, December 15. On the other hand, I have been doing a pretty good job at tackling the hurdles that have come down the pike on this thing, and THAT has been noticed by upper management.

Life really is a balance.

How much goofing off is acceptable in the work place?

Everyone goofs off a little bit in the work place, especially when there is access to the Internet. However, most professionally-minded people try to keep the ratio of work-time to goof-off-time in favor of productive work.

Enter my office mate, V. V is very young. This is her first full time job out of college. When you ask V to do something, she takes on the task without complaint and usually delivers great results in a timely fashion. However, without direction V is easily distracted and prone to massive amounts of goof-off-time.

I appreciate that she is young. I also appreciate that she usually meets requests in a timely fashion, and sometimes offers up solutions to issues that no one else considered. That said, last week V nearly became a stain on our office carpet.

V is habitually late since she doesn't have a car and must rely on public transportation. She also doesn't make up the time at the end of the day, because she needs to work around the schedule of said public transportation. She is basically in the building for just over eight hours most days, but thinks nothing of taking an hour for lunch.

Last week, V decided that she was tired of being a slave to public transportation and began shopping for a car. Her enthusiasm for this endeavor amounted to her utilizing most of the work day on both Thursday and Friday in pursuit of a vehicle. I tried not to let this bother me too much, since ultimately her new car would eliminate her excuse for working abbreviated days as a slave to public transportation.

However, since V has never had to purchase a car on her own and there were so many ins-and-outs involved in the purchase of the car, she felt the need to constantly interrupt me both days to ask for my input, opinion, and advice. She was even late to (and poorly prepared for) a meeting because she was busy showing car pictures to a friend from another group. I even tried to point out that she was going to be late and that she needed to read through a document before the meeting.

Friday afternoon, the two of us got out of a meeting around 4:30. I needed to write up the notes from the meeting before leaving for a three day weekend, so I could go home. However, V picked right back up with her vehicle drama as soon as we got back to our office. It took every ounce of my will power not to scream at her to "Shut the F**k up so I can finish up and go home." As it was, I wasn't really able to finish up my notes until after she left to catch her bus.

She left that meeting with an action item, which she still hasn't begun as of COB today. I guess I will have to nudge her tomorrow.

While I am supposed to be acting as a 'mentor' of sorts to V, sometimes it is difficult. I am not her supervisor, and I am definitely not her mother. So, how does one tactfully encourage a peer to refocus their energies on actual work in the work place?