Thursday, March 18, 2004

I cut out part of the below article, but thought the stages were interesting, and true to how people feel in new positions.  It's exciting, but tough.   It's hard, too, on the teammates who are trying to help their new (or moved) coworker through the transition full of questions and mistakes.  I think the longer we're away from being in the position, the less patience/understanding we have at remembering it... Starting out as a Program Manager. I have written about program management in general before, but I find the first year the most interesting. The usual pattern goes something like this: Start off with excitement and enthusiasm for the new job. Your manager tells you something about taking initiative, being "proactive" and "owning" projects. You say "yeah, of course, gotcha!". About 4 weeks into the job, you start to feel strange. People keep asking you to decide things you don’t know anything about, as if you’re some kind of expert. You find yourself going to your peers for help more often than you feel comfortable with. You start to wonder if you can actually do this. You start to tank. Depending on your personality, you withdraw into your office to try to figure everything out by yourself without bothering anyone, or you start asking a broader range of people how to do things as soon as you hit an obstacle, to try to "spread the pain" and get results quickly. By month two, you're convinced you are the dumbest person on the team by far. Everyone seems so capable, and they can do anything. Your manager says something like "remember, you’re 10% of the team that designs an N Billion dollar product - isn't that exciting? That means you have to step up and really "own things"". But you know that in fact you are an imposter - Microsoft has misjudged badly in hiring you and you are going to fail. By month four, you have lived through a torture of feeling incompetent and a dead weight on your team. It’s especially bad because you were #1 in your graduating class, and everyone always looked to you as the smart one. By month six, you have a great moment. Once, in a meeting, you actually knew something that no one else on your team knew. This is the first glimmer. You cling to this, and hope there are more. By month 12, you have developed your network of contacts that pass information to you, you are a subject matter expert on your area, and people on the team are relying on you because you know lots of things they don't know. You have made it. I've been coaching new employees for many years now, and I try to help them through this process. I even tell them they will experience these stages. That actually works for some people to help them avoid it, but a large fraction still go through the stages, and then when I say in month four "Remember I told you that you would feel like this?" they say, "Oh, that's what you meant!" [Chris_Pratley's WebLog] Comments9:26:58 PM

Release Criteria Define What "Done" Means. Want to make sure you complete your project as early as possible? Define release criteria. Release criteria are the few critically important objective criteria that define what "done" means for your project. Sometimes, it's a combination of date, defects, and feature completion. Sometimes it's just the date. The formula for defining release criteria is: Define project success. Define what's critically important that this project accomplish. Draft release criteria that are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Trackable. Gain Consensus on the criteria from management and the project team. Manage the project to the criteria. Easy to describe, not always easy to do. Read more about release criteria here. For ideas about what to consider measuring, remember the six sides of the project. [Managing Product Development] -------------------- I would say defining completion is one of the hardest things for me.  It's not so much that I don't do things I think of, but I know I have a hard time with the final 10% that makes things COMPLETE.  Often I just stop in my head when I'm ready to stop. Having a defining stopping point to reach, however, is one way to get past this. Comments9:19:36 PM

Death By Meeting. I just finished Patrick Lencioni's new book, Death By Meeting. I'm a big fan of his books, because they're easy to read (about two hours), interesting (written as a story/fable), and educational. I still count Five Dysfunctions of a Team... [John Porcaro: mktg@msft] Great summary by John...I plan on recommending the book to my team-leader as a purchase for us! Comments9:12:57 PM

Swiss Army Knife with USB. The next edition of the classic Swiss Army Knife will feature a built-in USB key. Link (Thanks, Jean-luc) [Boing Boing] Fingernail file, anyone?  Scissors?  USB?  Comments9:07:43 PM

Funky-cool pissoires. Bathroom Mania offers designer bathroom utilities -- flower pot toilet complete with singing birdie, hammock bath, beach cabin shower, and more. A recent Virgin Atlantic press release says their new clubhouse at JFK airport now includes the "Kisses" urinal. Link (Thanks, travis! Also seen on J-Walk) [Boing Boing] Bathrooms are often a neglected room...they can be fun too.  :) Comments9:04:53 PM

Mark Twain. "When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one." That Mark Twain...he knew a thing or two.  Sometimes we have to be our biggest cheerleader. Comments9:03:32 PM

XPower Mobile Plug Inverter. Via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools: You plug this solid-state inverter into your car's lighter socket and power whatever 110 volt AC appliance you want, 75 watts max. No need for special DC gadgets. It's made for recharging cell phones and other batteries, but I've used it for my scanner and my printer while on the road. Also, I've run a small B&W TV set (5'5), and more important, my baby's bottle heater (I admit is a small one). You can power almost anything that doesn't use large resistance like hair dryers, waffle makers, bread toasters, small ovens. I haven't tried a coffee maker yet. The same company offers an assorted line of automobile inverters with more output power (200 watts on up). This is the smallest one. -- Juan J Gil XPower MobilePlug 75, Manufactured by Xantrex [Boing Boing] OOoohhh....very cool, eh? Comments8:35:30 PM

© Copyright 2004 Rebecca Schwoch. Last update: 10/15/2004; 5:00:58 PM.