On Friday I had my first Widgeteer guest for lunch at Laws R Us. That person compared my workplace to working downtown where you can quickly walk to stores and restaurants. I think that was the intent of the executives who designed the place. My director (two levels up) told me it was better to have all this stuff in the campus than to have people leaving work to wander around the Small of America.
On Friday I completed a diagram of the software architecture of one of my projects and had another great talk with one of the people that doesn't show up at the project meetings. He explained what he did in a few sentences and I understood that he really didn't need to come to the meetings yet. I talked to a new senior project manager about starting work on his project and, other than the fact I kept spacing out during his long monologues, it all seems doable. There is an actual release date for one piece of that project---next June--which means I do need to get started right away.
Project management has been a hot topic in my emails and conversations. In my post a few days ago, I linked to a piece of what appears to be a really good book about project management. The premise of the chapter in the excerpt is that you can't organize people and work without prioritizing your work.
People were particularly interested in the section titled "Things Happen When You Say No" which he begins with these lines:
"One side effect of having priorities is how often you have to say no. It's one of the smallest words in the English language, yet many people have trouble saying it. The problem is that if you can't say no, you can't have priorities." The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun.
This was appropriate since a new major project was thrown at the folks in the basement at Widgets and like all the other projects it's Priority 1. I'm so sorry.
I should have read some of my testing book this weekend. I'll try to find time at work--I'll go hide upstairs in the comfy chairs behind the library. Lots of people are out this week so it'll be hard to organize anything much. I'll just work on cancelling and creating meetings. I know it could be much worse.
On Friday I completed a diagram of the software architecture of one of my projects and had another great talk with one of the people that doesn't show up at the project meetings. He explained what he did in a few sentences and I understood that he really didn't need to come to the meetings yet. I talked to a new senior project manager about starting work on his project and, other than the fact I kept spacing out during his long monologues, it all seems doable. There is an actual release date for one piece of that project---next June--which means I do need to get started right away.
Project management has been a hot topic in my emails and conversations. In my post a few days ago, I linked to a piece of what appears to be a really good book about project management. The premise of the chapter in the excerpt is that you can't organize people and work without prioritizing your work.
People were particularly interested in the section titled "Things Happen When You Say No" which he begins with these lines:
"One side effect of having priorities is how often you have to say no. It's one of the smallest words in the English language, yet many people have trouble saying it. The problem is that if you can't say no, you can't have priorities." The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun.
This was appropriate since a new major project was thrown at the folks in the basement at Widgets and like all the other projects it's Priority 1. I'm so sorry.
I should have read some of my testing book this weekend. I'll try to find time at work--I'll go hide upstairs in the comfy chairs behind the library. Lots of people are out this week so it'll be hard to organize anything much. I'll just work on cancelling and creating meetings. I know it could be much worse.
posted by changingagain at 9:29 PM
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