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Guide for career progression – 3Ps process – Part THREE – Practice hard
01072 days
by Swapnil
in Career thoughts
Practice hard – become a key player
In the last two posts about my guide to career progression, I wrote about how you can sense opportunities and prepare yourself for getting into grove.
The next step obviously is to get yourself involved in the project work and become a key player in the project. Now, understanding the term key player is very important to successfully complete this phase.
When I mention key player, I essentially mean that a person should be,
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Self reliant on any project related work
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Should be highly dependent & technically very very good on the job
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Should be able to provide Solutions to the problems
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Should have in-depth knowledge about the project & surroundings
Being self-reliant is achievable if you actually work really hard to understand the project, learn the project goals and start aligning your own short term goals according to the same. As I say,
Working hard is very very important, working smart is even more !
Becoming key player not only makes you an important person within the project but also makes you more dependable and reliable in terms of gaining the mileage out of your managers. I always emphasize on showing the results rather than just showing your work hours. Showing the work hours does not always help, unless your work demands so.
I expect a period of about 6-8 months again, for someone to become a key player in the project. Mind you, its not easy task to do so. You have to always show eagerness to learn new things, respond to changes & show your capabilities while on the road.
One thing I mentioned in my last post in this series (here) was to Show and prove that you alone can carry on the project and make the project dependant on yourself. This is a very very important thing in this phase and important exit criteria. Unless you can show your worth to the project, there is a little chance that your work will be noticed and considered worth its efforts by your management. (Sorry to disclose this tip though !)
Some important tips you can remember on the way to become key player are,
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Show your worth in the project and show results
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Take initiatives, implement technical solutions to common problems
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Work smarter and save efforts by automation of routine tasks
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Keep in mind that results matter, not the hours you burn
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Achieve efficiency in the process and show benefits to management & customers
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Be noticed each time !
If you can achieve this and become a key player in the project, it makes things lot easier for making yourself ready for the next phase in your career. As I said earlier, its not easy and probably not achievable without frequent discussions and re-aligning the short term goals with your manager. It is important to keep your manager aware of your progress, your short term goals and how you are able to help the project by your work !
Will write about the final phase probably in next couple of days as and when I get time to put things together. Till then, cheerio !
This is a series of FOUR posts on Guide for career progression – 3Ps process. Other posts on this could be found below.
Part ONE – Overview
Part TWO – Prepare yourself
Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player
Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress
Guide for career progression – 3Ps process – Part TWO – Prepare yourself
01076 days
by Swapnil
in Career thoughts
Prepare yourself
In any job you do, it is very important for you to set up your own goals. Unless you are clear on where you want to go in your career and what your objectives are then most probably you would end up being wood floating on a river.
So, set yourself goals. Realistic, achievable and most notably demonstrable goals, where you could show the output to your managers and peers. It always helps to have, as I said, realistic goals that could possibly achieved in a short term (3-6 months) and long term (2+ years).
One thing that you should keep in mind while setting goals is the fact that unless your goals satisfy two prime criteria. They are,
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Does it benefit your project / organization?
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Can that give you a value or a weight in your performance report?
Ok, once you have made your mind clear on the goals then the first and foremost thing you should do is to set the ball rolling by starting to work hard (read smart) in your project and demonstrate that you are absolutely keen and dedicated to the cause of the project (and organization).
Few actions you would like to note are,
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Understand the project quickly
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Be a good team player and a listener
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Help others in the team
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Demonstrate good results in the project and be dependable
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Show you can carry out the project on your own shoulders (secret tip – read it as make the project dependant on you) !
Typically you expect to get ready to move into 2nd gear of your progression over a period of 6-8 months. Once you have have met all above, you are ready to step into the next step and take more challenges on board.
Will write about the step two, in my part three sometime over next few days, so keep an eye here!
This is a series of FOUR posts on Guide for career progression – 3Ps process. Other posts on this could be found below.
Part ONE – Overview
Part TWO – Prepare yourself
Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player
Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress
Guide for career progression – 3Ps process – Part ONE – Overview
01076 days
by Swapnil
in Career thoughts
I have been wanting to write about this since a long time, however it took a real long time for me to think appropriately and make my mind on what I should post here. Well, finally I have tried to consolidate few thoughts in my mind about this and putting them here for you all to read / think and if you feel, act on them.
The progress of one in his career is as dependent on hard work, luck as you identifying the right opportunity, sensing chances and making your moves at the right time. The more you move up in the corporate chain, the more it makes things competitive and tougher to break.
In my relatively moderate experience and what I have seen around me, I have tried to devise the progression from one level to another into three step process, which if you work upon, and provided you identify opportunity, sense chances and make your moves at the right time, could help you progress in your career.
Now, before I move on the steps and uncover you the secret, I may warn you that this may not be obviously applicable in all possible cases and all possible job types. My little brain has worked only in the IT sector where you have typical organizational hierarchical structure to deal with and most importantly, you are interested in growing yourself up in the corporate ladder at any cost !
First pledge to me that you will never break this secret to anyone !
Great ! Thanks for your pledge. I can proceed happily now !
Moving on now to the three step process I mentioned earlier. The process is typically covered over a period of 2-3 years (considering the IT scenario now) so you must have a patience, a will to put shifts & hard work, capability to learn new things / skills as well as unlearn if the time demands you to do so and pray for a little bit of luck along the way.
The three steps of the process are Prepare, Practice & Pass. So henceforth I would call it as a 3Ps process.
I hope to publish a series of about 4 posts (including this) on career progression and how you can use the 3Ps process (Prepare, Practice & Pass) for your benefit.
Till then, enjoy your time on my blog and as usual thanks for visiting the it.
This is a series of FOUR posts on Guide for career progression – 3Ps process. Other posts on this could be found below.
Part ONE – Overview
Part TWO – Prepare yourself
Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player
Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress
Application support & Web 2.0
01083 days
by Swapnil
in App Support thoughts
Normally the application support and related teams stay away from the jazzy world of technical innovations and are more into daily maintenance tasks and do more of a routine work. It feels weird to relate the work done by the core support team to the concept like Web 2.0 and related technologies, doesn’t it?
As per the definition on Wikipedia,
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”
Or rather in simpler terms, Web 2.0 provides platform for achieving greater collaboration between people (read resources) via technology tools such as Wikis, Blogs, online automation etc., that promote knowledge sharing, information retrieving & automation of daily jobs.
Now consider the simple definition in terms of the daily job done by a typical support analyst. The application support team needs to have a knowledge management tool, needs to have a reference and error database, needs quick retrieval of the information and they also need the automation tools to do proactive monitoring & related stuff.
Lets have a quick roundup on some of the daily scenarios on how a typical application support analyst (Josh) works and how he can make his life easier by using the Web 2.0 tools.
- Incident Management – Josh is told about an incident by the helpdesk and he immediately looks up on the Support Wiki to find out if there have been related incidents & finds related information with a proper resolution path. Josh executes the steps mentioned on the resolution plan and quickly restores the service. He adds his experience of dealing the incident in the wiki and makes sure that the wiki is up to date with the information.
- Service Management – An important task of service management is key stakeholder management and keeping them aware of the progress. Mr Service Manager uses a pre-defined mailing list (i.e., mailman) and email templates keep the stakeholders aware of the issue. That way he saves time and ensures the consistency in the communications sent. The RCA is verified over the wiki and is approved and stored in the knowledge base for future usage.
- Automation of daily tasks & automated reports – Many tasks that Josh does every day such as conducting the health check of the systems, generate the health report and send them. He uses the custom built automated tools to make the tasks simpler and integrate it with the reporting system that would be available to stakeholders. Simple example of this is, creating the automated report that would retrieve the order status per hour and display on a near-real time graph so the business people can track and retrieve the information as and when they need it, rather than raising a request with ASG and waiting for it to be fulfilled. Mind you, one of the important aspect of Web 2.0 is to make information available socially to a community and empower the users. Josh has done exactly that by using the automated reporting system and making the information available to the community.
- Sharing information & updates in project – Josh also uses blogs to update the community about the project happenings, latest reports and other updates via putting them on the blog. The community participants subscribe them via RSS, Atom feeds and keep themselves updated.
- Conducting the trainings – All the training material is uploaded on intranet video streaming servers so all the users who need the training can straightaway go to the intranet site, register themselves and avail the training as per their convenience.
- Making product implementation or release on production – While doing the work on production to release a software or implement a product, Josh can use a tool like coveritlive.com, to cover the progress of the issue whereas the rest of the team can track the progress online, letting Josh to concentrate on the work rather than doing talking on conference.
Above are some of the scenarios I have tried to explain where the Web 2.0 tools and technology could be made of a good use for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency within the project.
Obviously, as I said earlier in my posts, the usage of above and how well you can combine the two is absolutely dependent on the project you are working and the demands of the project. Simple fact is you don’t want to land up in a situation where your work its worth $100 and your spend on technology adaptation is >$100 !
Cheerio !
Agile ready support processes – Key AIS recommendations
01089 days
by Swapnil
in App Support thoughts
Yesterday I posted an article about how someone should carry out the Acceptance into Service testing for the product that is being developed using the agile framework. I am continuing my thoughts on the same today and want to point out few key recommendations while following the process I put forward yesterday,
Agile development framework supports a proven way of working, Collaborative working and encourages close work interaction between various teams that are designing & developing the product, testing the product and providing the support to the product and various others so that the end product is developed that is most complete from each aspect and with minimum possible bugs with a fast turnaround time.
I would like to put forward the following recommendations to assist the support teams to carry out the AIS as effectively possible to ensure better serviceability of the product when it comes in-life,
- The support teams should act as an internal customer to the product / project development teams and have a very close working relationship with the individuals in the development team
- Support team should provide an acceptance criteria upfront and make sure all the demands and recommendations on which the sign off is based are understood clearly by the development team.
- Have a daily interaction with the development teams to ensure that all the recommendations are being incorporated in the actual code development.
- Do a weekly verification cycle by doing the acceptance testing of the development package on agreeable environment / platform. The development team should be able to demonstrate the evidences of recommendation implementations.
- The acceptance testing does not necessarily need to be done on the pre-production environment. In all possibilities most of the test cases could be carried out on the development environments and should be accepted as a credible proof.
- The final verification should a quick one and based on the evidences observed in the development testing so that the turnaround time will be quicker and help agile framework to release the product on live
- Share the responsibility with the development team and try to understand the application / product while it is being developed. Understand the key components and document them as a part of support manual. This could later be referenced in case of incident and problem management.
In the following table I try to summarize the last recommendation about shared responsibility into three categories to make it easy to understand. The following example is in case of the documentation involved in the process.
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Sample list of documentation from Delivery |
Sample list of documentation written / contributed by Support teams |
Format in which documents can be delivered / maintained / created |
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