his office looked sooooo much like my dorm-room: papers over papers ... messy folders over some other papers and a safe-deposit box he could open without the code and so on ... and he was the only one who could ever find anything in there;
he said he knew where everything was because he was "old-school"; ok, in my room there's also scuba gear spread all-over, clothing all-over the place, books, empty water bottles and what-not?!; and i'm the only one who knows under what to look, to find what i'm looking for.
anyway.
the (ideal) genuine certified cmm level 3 premium company has this really really easy way to track information; and status; and progress; and issues; and deadline delays; and sexy pictures received through email ... i think (i mean, i wouldn't, know, because i don't get them ;) );
but we're not a genuine certified cmm level 3 premium company; we're just aspiring to it; instead, it's just like my room. (the "old school" thing, all-over again);
it's like this:
we have status meetings; and progress meetings; and status reports; and problems sent through email (like blocking issues, and go/no-go confirmations and so on); and progress sent through email also;
then, we have progress reports generated daily; and weekly; and every other tuesday; and every other wednesday also!; and mail messages reminding us to sent an update of the status of the progress and the progress of the status of the update; and those come weekly also;
and as if that's not enough, at some point, some master spammer decided that all mail looks the same and you're not likely to pay attention to his zilion-th mail telling you to pay attention, so he started sending the weekly report on the weekly progress on something insignifiant with big, colored letters that jump in your eye and are harder to read.
then, (as with all the hundreds upon hundreds of spam we all enjoy on a day-to-day basis) the others decided that hey, that seems to work!, and started doing the same. so, now, all important email causes you an instinctive reaction of getting away from the monitor.
don't get me wrong!
it's not that things don't move forward in the project! they do! managers get their status updates, and progress updates, and progress status, and all that. that's good. (i think).
so, if it ain't broken, don't fix it! right?
nope!
it's broken! because it's still my dorm-room! the old-school feeling i told you about!
we don't have the papers upon papers upon folders that sit on top of still other papers.
no.
instead, we have excel files on top of excel files, sitting besides powerpoint presentations that are indexed in excel files.
oh! and email! let's not forget good-old email! it contains excel files; and powerpoint presentations; and, if you're really unlucky, completely unstructured word documents; or text documents; or other emails, with the green and pink BIG words that you should follow through.
and nobody fixes it. because it's not broken.
ask any manager! and if you really would manage to drive your point accross to your manager that you don't have a method to search through all those documents and email and excel files and word documents and whatever else, they'd say: no problem, you just voluntered to create another damned excel file to keep track of all the damned excel files.
it's funny: as part of the cmm level 3 review, we had an excel file that people can access and look through, to find a description and link to all other documents; i just don't remember on which damn server that index document is! and if you start looking through the servers it'll take you a few hours, because it's over 500 of them!
also, there's this neat little website that you can access, to see the status of the weekly build; i think i'm the only one that knows it actually exists.
anyway ...
what usually happens is that you end up asking your team-mates or cubicle mates, or cigarette mates (if you smoke):
who do i have to call in "systems" if i cannot connect to server X? and then get something like i sent an email there last week. i'll forward you the mail, or a simple i don't know, ask somebody else.
well, no wonder it takes a few months for new employees to adapt! for almost six months after coming here, i got the distinct feeling of pure, simple chaos (i don't know my targets, deadlines, issues, plan, current task-load and so on). now, i'm starting to see (partially) how and where things are moving.
because i have the magical solution: when in trouble, ask a senior. so what happens, is that instead of me being blocked because i lack information, now john doe, senior in my project is stoped also, to tell me where to look.
that wouldn't be so bad. but as it happens it's not just me; johny-boy is stopped for all the questions all the new guys have. and i am stoped also; just to answer i don't know; go ask jonny
so, to really make a difference, you'd have to go high enough, so that the change would be enforced throughout the company. and if you did, your direct supervisor would have to be there and explain why the hell this change didn't come through him; but it's not his fault; because all he can do to such suggestions is say no. because he doesn't have the authority to say yes to a company-wide policy change.
such are the fallacies of bureaucracy!
so, what can we do?
i don't know. because i don't have the power in this company to say yes to company-wide changes either.
in my first company, there was this small intranet site; you opened the browser, and got links to the coding standards ... contacts ... procedures ... what to do in different blocking issues and what-not (and it was a small company and there was not so much need for different information at your fingertips).
sure, we have such an intranet site here; and sometimes it's quite interesting (like once-a-month);
Yes!
that's why i fiddled with my browser to display a blank page at startup (and now i see the intranet website less often - like once-a-month ;) ).
you see, the intranet site idea could work ... except there's one big problem with the company intranet site:
it's not related to my project
it's only good for social life (car-insurance documents, who to contact if you need a baby-sitter, emergency phones, buy-and-sell, and what happened with the company in the last x months: everybody celebrate, we just closed the contract with company XYZ.com
that is, there is no what to do in different blocking situations, and no who do i contact if my oracle instance uses a strange charater set? made from looney tunes caracters
my oracle instance characters set
because that's project speciffic, not company speciffic.
so, after all that useless ranting on my part, if you have any good ideas for changing this old-school, not broken status-quo, please let me know and you might be thanked for it through all posterity, by all my team-mates, ever and ever, amen.
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