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End of year review 2015

Introduction

What a crazy and busy 12 months. I’ve just noticed that five months have gone by since my last blog post and I honestly can’t think of when I had a spare slot to write a blog post in that period. The goals I set myself at the beginning of the year have been tweaked, dropped and completely changed along the way. With that in mind, I thought I’d review what I actually got up to.

So what got done?

I’ve been managing the network team at my current company for a couple of years now but I was keen to try and get back to my hands on roots this year to prevent those skills from evaporating.

The opening of our brand new data centre in Aberdeen gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that, running with the project from the design and planning phases, through procurement, implementation, testing and finally live operations as of October. Introducing new technology in to our portfolio and the importance of the project made this a very rewarding experience.

I’ve also dived in to a number of long lasting customer projects in the last 12 months, most notably taking the lead on a migration from another data centre in to our new one. The best two things about this project were brushing up and learning some new skills and collaborating with the customer team. I really enjoy having discussions with customers about how they can get the best out of technology.

Summary

With 2015 drawing to a close, I could look back at the goals I set at the start of the year and feel a sense of disappointment. After all, most of them were not achieved. However, I think being flexible in what you hope to achieve and finding yourself at the end of the year largely happy with what you did achieve is what the overall goal should be for anybody.

For 2016, I really want to carry on with my sleeves rolled up, working with great technology and people. I also want to try and be a bit more frequent with my blog posts!

Have a great festive period everybody and hope to see you all next year.

Till the next time.

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10 tenets of working in IT – Tenet 10, Review

Introduction

The 10 tenets of working in IT series originally started with a post on PacketPushers back in 2012. I got a good response to that and when I was writing it, I had envisioned breaking out each tenet to its own post.

This final post in the series covers off how to review. Not just reviewing the other tenets from time to time but review your tasks, your career and your life.

Review

Reviewing is all about taking a look at where you are in your big plan. This will only be effective if you have set yourself goals. Whilst these targets can move and change based on circumstances, both within and outside your control, adapting to these changes is going to be more effective if you go through a regular review process.

Don’t micromanage yourself though, which will usually end up being counter-productive. I find that setting goals, breaking them down in to tasks and putting time scales against them makes it an easier job for me to keep on top of them and setting a regular review session, the frequency of which is usually determined by a combination of the end date and priority.

It’s also important to review your career progress. Have you been so heavily focussed on your current role for such a long period of time that you’ve missed opportunities to progress, either upwards or outwards? It is important to take a look down from a higher altitude to see what is on the horizon and potentially beyond.

The same goes for keeping a track on life in general. How many workaholics, highly successful career people, have sub-optimal personal lives because they apply all their energy to their careers and come home with nothing left in the tank? Sure, there are times when you know giving it 110% at work is going to pay off down the line e.g. pulling a project out of the disaster bin, and a compromise at home can be agreed with all parties, but if these periods extend for too long unchecked, things can go awry over time.

Treat your career and your personal life like a prized network; monitor, be proactive, tweak, capacity plan and get feedback from its users. The last thing you need is an outage.

Summary

It’s all very well having a solid plan of action with the skills and behaviours to see that plan through but if you don’t take a step back every now and again and review what you do, what needs throwing out and what can be improved, you may find yourself not achieving your full potential. Keep challenging yourself, measuring progress and moving forward.

I hope this series has been useful to you, at least in parts if not in its entirety. Feel free to get in touch or drop a comment in on the blog.

Till the next time