Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Perhaps I am infectiously obnoxious. I was in a meeting this morning with a powerpoint presentation being shared of the web. The first slide read:

Project Support Team/Knowledge Transfer Team: Here to Help

I have infected more people with my catch phrase! *evil laugh* Once upon a time, I was between jobs. Since I was just job hunting and such, I saw lots of friends and showed up to many calls for assistance. My first statement upon arriving at a move, pre-party prep session, gardening day, etc. was, “I’m here to help.” After dropping a big box of books on my foot, “I’m here to help.” After teasing someone mercilessly about something silly, “I’m here to help, but I didn’t necessarily say whom I was here to help!” In a short time, my friends and family realized that I was trekking around for my own amusement and that accepting my “help” had a certain amount of risk associated with it since ultimately I was there for my own amusement.

When I did take a new job, it was a support management position so of course, “I’m here to help” stayed in my idiolect. No surprise, sarcasm crept into my delivery of the catch phrase and stayed there. When I changed jobs again, the sarcasm ebbed a bit and the genuine helpfulness returned. Of course, I quickly found myself in need of more help than I could give on the Project of Doom. The catch phrase fell out of my professional idiolect until the Project of Doom completed and I got assigned to the PST/KTT referenced above.

The team was new and still defining itself. In fact, I had a hard time figuring out what the boundaries were for our duties when supporting projects. At one point I turned to my boss and said, “So we’re here to help?” She said, “Exactly.” As things got entertainingly crazy, I repeated “Here to help” as a mantra. The problem with a loosely defined purpose is that it’s easy to get dragged in deeper and deeper until support becomes serious hand-holding. “We’re here to help” continued to accurately define our role even if we did say it sarcastically sometimes. My boss even queues me to say it during meetings team meetings. I tell my project managers that I support that I’m here to help them with anything I can.

Well, clearly it caught on. Some of the mischievous sense of the phrase has remained as well as the sense of “I didn’t say whom I was here to help.” Our team serves many different groups and organizations and juggles a lot of different best interests. The nice part is that we really are here to help. It’s a simple, straight-forward nice way of summing up what we do. Sure, sometimes we run around doing silly little things no one else has time for. Other times we dive far deeper into the data than anyone else. But it’s all encompassed by “Here to Help” and we’re communicating that mission loud and clear.

The photograph of the mossy rock is actually the top of the stone wall around the nearby graveyard. Click for a larger version - the focus is quite narrow/short and the effect is kind of neat.

tags: communication, here to help, moss, project management, rocks, support, work

Taking a little break from zoo pics. Here’s a shot of Venice. There are many things I like about Venice as well as many things that make me never want to live there. This picture embodies much what I like: varied architectural styles, a startling amount of greenery, various docking and moorings, foot bridges and incredible light. I also love water doors, but you can’t see one here. I took this from one of the small ferries that loop all the way around and through Venice. It’s totally worth whatever small amount we spent on the trip. I can’t think of another city where you can get such a comprehensive “bus” tour with so little traffic and such unobstructed views. Of course, it was really really cold on the boat, but that’s a minor detail.

Congestion sucks. It sucks more when it causes massive headaches and persists through doses of Caritin. Today is somewhat better than yesterday - no active headache, but there’s definitely one waiting to swoop in if I’m not nice. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I suspect a diagnosis of an on-going sinus infection that has finally become unbearable.

Technical Project Management - talk to people!
In other news, my work projects are moving right along though one of the project managers I’m supposedly assisting is ignoring my e-mail. Astounding. There’s a peculiar mindset I keep encountering in project managers, that is very insular, secretive and territorial. This is an utterly counterproductive attitude to have. You end up repeating mistakes, having to relearn alone everything your colleagues could help you figure out more quickly, and hitting all the pitfalls and delays along the way. Oh, and you end up alienating people from other departments who are supposed to be supporting you. I may pester my DBA or disk storage guy a little much, but they appreciate that I ask questions and make them clarify things until I understand things fully. I try to ask my stupid questions intelligently at least and I almost always take notes so I don’t end up asking the question again. It helps that I come from a technical background and can grasp what they’re talking about fairly quickly but I think even the non-technical project manager working on a technical project should be interested in some of the geeky underpinnings of their project.

Some project managers are afraid of tech-speak or technology concepts or just don’t want to get bogged down with the details. Me, I love the details. The details not only hold intellectual interest and provide additional perspective on my project but they give me a way to bond with my tech folks. Building a good relationship with the tech folks can be more valuable than you ever imagined. First, if you show that you value their input, skills and opinions, they are more likely to raise their concerns sooner and in a constructive manner. If crisis hits, they’re more likely to put in 110% for your project because they feel like part of your team.

Of course, communing with technical people doesn’t always work. Sometimes you just don’t click or accidentally take too much of the person’s time with your questions. Honestly, I’ve found most people respond well to a genuine, intelligent effort to learn more. Some people, regardless of field, are too bitter and jaded to care that I’m interested but I try anyway. About half the time I get through their sharp and pointy exteriors and forge an alliance of some sort. The other half of the time I end up with more information than I started with so it’s still a win.

Technology just seems to be the most common phobia I see but there are many others. Asking questions is a great way to form a relationship with your finance people, quality control team and process folks, to name a few. By learning more about what they’re doing for you and what you need to do for them you are making their jobs easier as well as your own. A 15 minute conversation may save everyone a day’s work. It doesn’t get better than that when you’re trying to deliver on-time and under budget.

tags: canals, communication, italy, project management, technical project management, technology, venice

• Part the First: Bald eagle at the Philadelphia Zoo

The zoo has a pair of bald eagles who like to pose for the camera however last time I visited only one came out to strut about. I should take pictures of their claws as well. They are impressively powerful birds. Majestic? Not so much. But definitely powerful carnivores who are not to be messed with.

• Part the Second: In which I take a quick walk and don’t get rained on

I took a quick walk at lunch today - about 2 miles in 35 minutes or so. I enjoyed it despite the cold, gray, damp weather that was actively threatening rain. However, this afternoon I feel incredibly mellow and spacey. It’s been a while since I had such an exercise high. Once upon a time I lived in Vancouver and would go jogging in the morning along the Seawall. I ended up giving it up because the post-exercise high made me a danger to myself and others during my morning commute. I would be in such bliss that I simply wouldn’t care about traffic or potentially getting in an accident or anything. I considered this to be, generally, a bad state of mind to be in while driving, even in Vancouver. Thank goodness Vancouver has some of the most polite drivers on the planet otherwise I might not have lived through my morning jogging phase!

So I sit here all mellow, drinking my water, and wonder what I can do to counter act this annoying yet blissful state. I am vaguely useless … well, at least I think I am. Tomorrow morning I’ll look at the presentation I whipped up after lunch and see if it’s any good. Perhaps I shouldn’t have skipped making tea for lunch. At any rate, we’ll see if this is just a one-time relapse of mellow-spaceyness or if it persists. I think I’ll really like lunchtime walks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely little high, just not a very productive one!

• Part the Third: In which I send a quick little e-mail and make a lot of folks happy

Communication is easy. I don’t know why more people don’t do it. Once my project was approved I sent a quick update to a group of potential users who had helped out with a questionnaire and providing their input. You’d think they’d never been updated before! Half of the group responded gleefully, grateful to have received the update and enthusiastic to do more. Each of the respondents mentioned that most often whenever they provide feedback it seems to go into a blackhole. I admit that I updated them specifically because I hoped they would volunteer to help more with the project but I didn’t expect quite the response I got. Even if I hadn’t wanted to leverage them for other work, I would have sent them a thank you note with the news of the project. That seems just simple common courtesy. Their feedback was incredibly useful in supporting the proposal I wanted to put forward. They responded quickly and on short notice.

My my mission shouldn’t be to become Wiki Queen but to instead ensure that no one feels their feedback is going into a blackhole in the future! (Of course, my master plan for this includes a wiki…)

tags: bald eagles, communication, eagles, exercise, philadelphia zoo, technology, vancouver, walking, wiki, zoo

Another photo from my birthday. An Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) at the Philadelphia Zoo. Thanks to the cooler weather, he was finally awake and wandering about. Perhaps he was hoping I’d bring cake. In general the animals who were wout that day were more active than I’d seen them in the past. (The light cross-hatching on the picture is from the wire fence I took the photo through.) They are native to Japan, parts of China and southern Asia but they’ve been hunted to extinction in many areas. Yes, this sweet-faced bear is very popular in traditional medicine. Well, bits of him are. Sadly, they’re bits he can’t live without!

Work this week has been a great deal of fun. I may have the chance to show off not only my geekitude but also my incredible desire not to reinvent the wheel next week. I was assigned to a project that had been strugling for about 5 weeks. Ever since I’ve been hearing about this project I’ve thought,”Wow, that’s a wiki.” In one week I’ve narrowed down the options for a solution and identified an enterprise wiki solution that happens to be part of the standard architecture and could save us an enormous amount of time, effort and money. The project to put the wiki in place will be finishing the end of February. From there, we get space and go wild!

How did I find this magical solution? I asked around. How novel, right? One of my standard interview assertions is that I’m not afraid to ask stupid questions. I love proving that it pays off to do so! In this case, it could pay off very tangibly. My boss seems impressed, the project liason from the business side likes the solution… next week hopefully we’ll get some more answers and present it to the business customer. I’m not looking to advance my career here, just solidify it. I like this contracting stuff. And I like solving problems intelligently.

On top of all this? I really enjoy wikis. I think wiki is an awesome technology that fosters a great user community.  This wiki may not quite fit what the business customer is looking for but the price is likely to be right enough that we’ll make it work for her. Most importantly, I think she’ll be happy with it.

tags: asiatic black bear, bear, philadelphia zoo, photographs, photography, project management, technology, wiki, work, zoo