Are you ready to be a workstream leader?
Ten Questions to Test your Readiness:
Disclaimer: This is not based on fact, this is based on personal experience (as a WS leader)…
1. When your superior assigns you a new workstream, do you reply
(a) yes sir
(b) we can deliver within a week (even though no details are known)
(c) organize a workshop and assemble a high-level analysis
(d) delegate to someone random in your viscinity
2. When a workstream needs planning, do you
(a) first setup a high level plan with target milestones set
(b) ensure that developers are flooded with emails about ensuring milestones are kept
(c) first make sure you understand what’s going on
(d) delegate to someone random in your viscinity
3. If a milestone starts slipping do you
(a) panic
(b) escalate downwards
(c) gather your developers, assess the situation, work out the alternatives and escalate upwards
(d) ask people at random for a full report with phrases like “why did this happen”
4. If a milestone will fail because of bugs and incomplete functionality, do you
(a) ignore it
(b) destill the problem to the bare minimum, so that nobody knows anymore what’s going on and the milestone is upheld
(c) let it fail, take the hit, reorganize, fix the problem and make sure processes are improved.
(d) ask people at random for a full report with phrases like “dissapointing”
5. When dependent systems raise last minute requirements which were not agreed at first, do you
(a) tell them to go to hell and push onward
(b) cave in, say “oh, ok”, and put pressure on the team to absorb and deliver, ensuring milestones are upheld.
(c) assess the situation, accept if possible, but escalate and say “no” if it’s a problem.
(d) delegate to someone random in your viscinity
6. The main purpose of a workstream leader is
(a) to create Gantt Charts
(b) be some kind of invisible conduit with minimal flow resistance
(c) drink Cappucino
(d) bug people
7. Which of the following characteristics should a workstream leader NOT have
(a) thick skin
(b) intelligent
(c) addicted to coffee+beer+fries with an aversion to exercise
(d) analytical
8. Which species most closely resembles a workstream leader
(a) Snake
(b) Urang Utan
(c) Homo Erectus
(d) Worm
9. What is the most common word a workstream leader will use
(a) shit
(b) fuck
(c) huh?
(d) supercalafragalisticexpialadotiuous
10. A workstream leader is
(a) overwhelmed by the passage of time
(b) underpaid
(c) a leader of good men
(d) usually drunk
Hint: the answer is in all cases (c)
A Lesson Learned
An extract in the life-and-times of a project:
Wednesday….
09:31 Mazinga, Chief We have an urgent probelm in Production with neting! Please address with utmost prioiruty!!!!
09:32 Developer, Dude Need a description of the issue and some background info. When did the problem first appear?
09:35 Mazinga, Chief Buisness can you providde feed back?????
09:35 Genius, Guy Please find attached a full description of the error. The problem appeared on Monday.
09:35 God The file contains a single sentence: “Netting does not work”. But is adorned with a title page, table of contents, signoff list, revision history and is of course Rebrand-Compliant.
09:40 Developer, Dude Ummm, thanks. We’ll get on to it.
09:41 Mazinga, Chief Any newss???
09:42 Developer, Dude Please stand by. We are addressing the issue with top priority. Will update you at 10:00.
09:43 Mazinga, Chief Thx.
10:00 Developer, Dude We are not sure what’s happening. The netting code is extremely complex and trying to understand the inner workings of this vendor code will take some time. We need to use an empirical approach and focus on the changes that were made when the problem first appeared. We will keep you posted. Sorry that we do not have a quick solution. Update at 14:00 at the latest.
10:05 Mazinga, Chief What change??? Was its authoirized??? Why did we make a change that cuased paroblems??? Need to addresss uurgently!!!!
10:05 God I wish I could bring Moses back
14:00 Developer, Dude We have analysed and retested the code changes which we brought live immediately prior to the appearance of the problem, can definately say that these cannot be the cause. Business, can you confirm when the problem first appeared?
14:35 Genius, Guy The problem appeared on Monday.
14:35 God This is the moment when it’s time to ignore causality and assume that the information given is incorrect.
14:41 Mazinga, Chief Can you action please????
14:42 Developer, Dude Yes.
14:48 Mazinga, Chief Newss??????
17:02 Developer, Dude We have isolated the problem. Production has been fixed. It is due to a change made on Wednesday to the configuration. Business, why did you say the problem appeared on Monday?
17:02 God Get serious. It’s after five. BAs have gone to the pub.
17:18 Mazinga, Chief Excellent job, thx.
17:18 God Joined by the manager, who has a blackberry.
Thursday….
07:12 Developer, Dude Fix has been confirmed. Business, why did you say the problem appeared on Monday?
11:35 Genius, Guy Well, usually it takes the users a few days to detect a problem, so we assumed it started on Monday.
17:18 Mazinga, Chief Excellent job, thx. Good team effrot.
Captain’s Log Stardate 20060918.1955D
Today, our CSI:Earth unit was sent on a covert on-planet mission. The emergency operation “What’s Rebranding?” was launched at 07.654 UCT under direct executive command. Our remote sensors detected suspicious packages with no apparent peaceful use. Our COPS (Covert Operations) quickly zoomed in on the only possible use for the package:
We think that these might be an attempt at creating “Weapons of Mass Deduction” for use by Office-Rambos in order to keep their team members alert and productive at all times.
Captain’s Log Stardate 20060915.1530C, Financial Exploration Unit 7
We have landed on the planet EAS12434 in Quadrant XP-AlaDotious which is a particularly annoying part of the Galaxy, most notable for its complete isolation from the HICCUP (Hyperspace Interconnection Complex for Civilizations Under Pressure). Our mission is to investigate the activities within a financial institution, responsible for triggering cash bookings exceeding the total sum of financial holdings in the known universe, (currently at 584 Kazillion EUR, about 6.432×10**49 UCreds).
Mission control has given us permission to violate the prime directive, and intervene, should these transactions continue to drain the financial resources of this sector via the “Italian Connection”. A particularly sensitive mission, I must say.
We have isolated the source of these anomalies within a particular group of autonomous mobile entities, known as Homo Sapiens (the correlation between Homo and Sapiens escapes us), at universal coordinates 435.2344Sx212.3234E. However, we are still trying to understand how the failures came about, since our AnsweringEngine indicates that this civilization is actually incapable of influencing anything more than a pile of Zorgon-Paste from Planet Krip. These nihilistic entities actually seem to be more concerned with their strange bodily functions, and coherent action happens only by chance. A paradox with wide-ranging implications…
The entities can be broken down into 4 basic groups: Users, Analysts, Developers and Managers.
Managers make promises to other Managers, in order to appease these and be left alone for a limited temporal period. These then get forgotten, until a query is raised, at which point much activity is created to mitigate the effects of lost time. This is actually known as “Opportunistic Minimal Action Path Selection”, which led to the extinction of the Wankie species on Flaton. We are unsure what the use is for these entities here, and suggest to replace them with decorative, inedible plants.
Analysts are invited to look into topics, with the aim of producing so called “Documentation”. These entities seem to be able to do anything with impunity, and we have not yet been able to detect any correlation between the content of the Documentation and the actual outcome of the Project. We suspect that these beings live in different dimensions and report the real results of their thinkings to the species habitating the outer planets of Zinga, where we have also seen hyperdimensional activities (mostly related to digging worm-holes and filling them up again).
Developers are told by Managers to chase so called “Non-Issues” with utmost priority, while at the same time fullfilling the Promises which are supposed to be defined in Documents (see above). Developers seem to be a hybrid between the fault-tolerant race of Tribula/Phi (which are regularly crushed by falling boulders without expiring) and the flexible time-shifting beings of Karamba, best known for their ability to produce results in negative time at the drop of a HAT (Highly Aggressive Task). This is the only known combination which could possibly lead to the long-term survival of this group within the Paradox known as The Bank.
Users are also known as Victims. But it’s their fault because they refuse to use their brain for anything other than primitive bodily experiences (sports talk and pop radio music). We have not yet been able to detect formations of sentences exceeding 3 words. The most common phrase is “Calypso Broken”, which we are still investigating…
After our initial investigations, all our productive actions came to a grinding halt… These entities apparently have an extreme negative effect on our ability to think straight. We are under neuronal attack from the chaotic emanations of these beings and have decided to retreat to safety (behind their planet Saturn, where a Hyper-Bar has been setup for recreational purposes) and take a stiff drink to recover.
Liebster Tagesbüchle
Today, we had more fun than ever. We went for an early lunch and ate many foods. Then we cycled to a big building to speak to fine people with little interest in what doom is approaching the bank. But it was nice to sit in the foyer with dark sunglasses on, commenting on passers by (i.e. girls), waiting for security guards to start up their PC so that we can get useful badges.
It was a fine meeting, filled with emptiness and a vague feeling of dislocation and no drinks. However, most people left early, so that we could hold monologues on things we don’t understand. It was very nice to leave the meeting with no actions on our part, and some moist handshaking all round.
Cycling back we almost got killed by a taxi, but that was OK, because it meant we finally had some adrenalin flowing to keep us awake for the latter part of the day.
Waiting for us was a nice desk with many papers and blinking lights on the telephone. After ignoring all urgent calls, and going for some fine coffee, we launched some new code into the real world to see what will happen this time. It’s called hotfixing and is much appreciated by all who don’t have to use the system we created.
Now after a hard days work it’s time to quit early before the alarms go off in production.
keep looking »...spare time
