Robert on Software Development

Years ago, when I first started working in the IT business at a small electric company in Texas, I had a coworker named Jim. Jim was in his 60s and had been an electrical engineer all his life, which in 1994 added up to about 40 years. He was enormously respected for his understandably dizzying knowledge of electrical engineering, especially when it involved transmission lines and substations.

My interaction with Jim was a support role. The electric company had computers on every desk, loaded with Microsoft Office and AutoCAD for the engineers. Jim would try to figure out how to solve his own IT support issues, and it usually resulted in things getting worse. For example, one day he called me and said that his mouse was moving around on his screen too fast. I sat down at his desk and instantly realized that his mouse pointer acceleration was set to the maximum. I guess he had been playing around with it and set it too high. Typical engineer!

Jim used the same greeting with everyone he saw during the day: “How’s your day going?” It always resulted in the same canned replies, like “fine” and “great.” I didn’t realize the philosophical implications of Jim’s question until much later: what am I doing and what I have accomplished so far.

Today I have evaluated 11 change requests for technical errors, changed the enterprise architecture diagram for a solution assessment, and fixed a bug in the C# code for my workflow application. That’s what I’ve accomplished so far.

But what am I doing? How is the rest of my day going? How can I ensure I’m giving my customer a maximum return on their investment? What can I do to ensure that when I get home, I can tell my fiancee that I’ve had a good day?

The answer has two parts: first, how can I track what I’m doing, and second, how can I know when it’s done. To-do lists, notes in OneNote, task list in Outlook, sticky notes on my monitor, Follow Up tags on my emails, or a mental list just a few of the many ways people track the ever-expanding list of Things to Do. I’ve tried them all. I settled on using different tools for each job. I use Excel to track the change requests I’m reviewing. I use Outlook to manage the tasks associated with following up with change builders. I use OneNote to track the lifecycle of certain documents that undergo a lot of changes from meeting to meeting.

In information technology, the management of Things to Do has wide-reaching influences and often requires a substantial investment in tools and people. Everything from the business processes to the schedule to the project manager to the people doing the work has to be meticulously tracked, verified, and managed. This is one of the cornerstones of good IT governance.

Hats off to you, Jim, wherever you are now.