03.25.07

On being the best

Posted in Technology Adoption, Software Requirements, Corporate Life, Process, Politics, IT management at 9:29 pm by ngkaboon

I just saw a master seasoner seasoning mackerel on TV. It is impressive that he can grab 20g of salt each time with his bare hands. He demonstrated by grabbing salt and scattering it onto 3 electronic weighing scales. On the first attempt, he was off by 2g on one of the scale. In the second attempt, he managed to “weigh” 20g consistently on the 3 scales. In practice, he is able to salt the mackerel with such consistency 10 at a time in 2 seconds flat. That is what we call a true master.
It reminds me of what I set out to be. I have to strive on being the best in the line I am in. Being the best currently means to be able to make impossible projects finish in record cost and time covering the most scope and attaining the highest quality. Only when I am able to do that consistently for all projects would I be able to call myself a true master.

Unlike operational work, project work is not repetitive and hence, to be able to see patterns across projects is challenging. To be able to master this, I need to work on impossible projects. To work on impossible projects, I first need to show to people that I can do the simple projects well. In addition, I need to be doing projects across multiple domains to be able to comprehend different types of projects and understanding the patterns. So far in my career, I have a fair bit of switches from research to technical to people management, from pharmaceutical to products to projects and from supply chain to regulatory to financial accounting.

Some of the hard projects I have seen as one or more of the following characteristics:

  • Same data coming from different sources
  • Processes driven by legacy and regulation that nobody really know absolutely about
  • Organization structure mismatches
  • Strong resistance from key business stakeholders

08.11.06

My job as a dentist

Posted in Technology Adoption, Corporate Life, IT management at 8:23 am by ngkaboon

Recently I visited a dentist for a root-canal treatment. I have always hated visiting a dentist all my life. In fact, I gave advice to a colleague for her kids, (1) Bring the kids to  friendly dentists so that they will not be afraid of dentists and (2) Make sure their teeth are in proper arrangement so that it will not suffer from dental problems in the future.

Recalling my work as an IT professional, I realized I am sometimes being perceived as a dentist. People, over the years in dealing with misappropriate IT professionals, have become afraid of dealing with IT people. And like visiting a dentist, once you are on a dentist chair, there is nothing you can do to complain (at least not through your mouth). Does it not sound like the inept helpdesk that we keep encouraging our user to call? In a long session like a root-canal treatment, you do not even know what happen if the dentist keeps on working on your teeth. Drawing on the analogy, it would seem that it is important for your users to find an avenue to raise their discomfort (like raising hands in a dental session) and it is important to provide constant feedback on what is happening in the session. 

As for the earlier pair of advice, there is nothing much I can do about exposing first time users to the right IT. And for the latter advice, the closest analogy would be to fix the information problem and make sure the information is well-organized. In this way, even when system upgrades, the migration would be simpler.

 

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