Introduction
2014 was a slightly strange year for me in some respects. I moved in to a new leadership role, delivered some big projects successfully with the help of my team and got lots of the smaller jobs off my plate, but it still felt like I could have achieved a lot more. The good news is that I’ve been tracking everything that needs addressing so have a good idea of what my team’s priorities are for the coming year already.
My own priorities
My aim is to make 2015 the year of automation. Not in any one area anywhere I think I will hit my two key goals, those being to get a ROI on my time and to standardise as much as possible and I will be using those goals to measure where to focus my efforts. I am already familiar with PowerShell from my SysAdmin days and have built a number of tools in Visual Basic over the years but will be taking what I have learnt about Python over the last few months to a new level. I have already started taking related scripts and creating my own modules and already have ideas on how I want start making bigger applications that are more object oriented.
I also plan on blogging more about my automation journey so expect some Python posts in particular.
Summary
2014 was the year of steadying the ship, ensuring nothing critical fell through the cracks and hopefully helping my team develop personally. I’ve heard people across the industry quote how 2015 will be the year of SDN, IPv6, NFV, blah, blah, blah. I make no such claims, although out of those, I would put my money on NFV and maybe blah. For me though, this year will be about brushing down some old and not recently used skills and giving them a high polish. I won’t need to become a fully blown developer but the skills I intend on picking up will be useful in many areas of my life, both at work and otherwise.
Till the next time.