Week 7 – Time Management

A horrible start to this week and things are improving which is great. I have been hugely busy and this is when time management comes into play haha.

I have been fairly ahead of schedule in my work in the past couple of weeks but Monday I think the real stress is coming out in me. Yes that's right Jake, STRESS!!!

For the people who not aware of what I am talking about, click here
to watch a segment of one of my favourite shows the IT Crowd.

Anyway getting back to it, the stress started when I got an abusive phone call Monday morning from my Centre Manager saying that it was not good enough that I was going to be late on Monday. Now when I arranged the shift, I was willing to pass it someone but they were desperate for me to do it and would cope for the times that I would be late, but no, apparently it's not good enough which is complete bull. I just hate that I give so much help to the place and when all I ask is for a couple of nights to be mindful that I have uni, they flip off their heads.

Then the next thing to happen has just brought me completely down. I handed in the Standards and Governance document on Friday instead of the Business Case. I cannot believe that I mistakenly grabbed the wrong document. And then when printing out the document, the landscape pages, I should have printed them the other opposite way around. If the book was opened, the top of the page would on the right side instead of the left. These mistakes are going to cost our group a few marks which could have been avoided. As you can see I have high expectations for the group and think because I am project manager that I should be leader by example so yeah, felt like I definitely let down the team this time.

Been having some back and neck problems at the moment and with the stress levels, it does not help. Both combined led to a massive headache and so went to the shops to go get Panadol. (Wow this blog is really going into details this week) So yeah bought a 50 pack and didn't think much of it. Well everyone thought it was hilarious that I got so many.

"Have you that big of headache that 50 Panadols could only fix" (Luke Wieselmann, 2008).

Client Meeting this week was held at their office for something different. Taken for a tour of their services they provide and are just amazing how much they really do help the community. Well this week we did some screen shots of what we thought might be in the system for a new approach into asking questions. Well I think it was extremely successful although I think the client thought we didn't read enough into their material. Reason for being so successful, they were straight away saying that we need more detail for the users to enter. This brought up more conversations and more understanding into the current manual system that they are wanting. Things discussed were the multiple types of timesheets they have such as night shift timesheet in case the career was woken up due to clients needs. They would be paid extra for this. So what I am thinking is having a simple timesheet with allowances for additions such as night sift hours. Again this week our meeting ran overtime and was suggested by the client to have our group go last for next week so then we are able to go overtime if needed which I think we need to.

We attempted a Skype meeting on Tuesday night which was successful with a lot of hiccups. Successful in the way that we discussed and made decisions about the project that was much needed but hiccups were a lot of issues with Vishan's laptop totally freezing and issues with Skype, slowing each of the PC's a lot. Things discussed in the meeting were the decision if we wanted to push for electronic signatures. We all decided yes it would be good but certain issues like not all employees would have email accounts and complexity of the system to ensure that users would use it were just some of the issues. Another thing that the client spoke of was that it may send employees against the system all together and so really it's a problem of cultural change. The discussion was more than 45 mins long a decided that if we had so many issues to discuss that it would be too difficult designing the system. Also, we have organised another meeting for Sunday to discuss all the different timesheets because there is 14 different timesheets which I believe is really complicated. I think we might look at re engineering their timesheets but might not be possible. Anyway the things we are going to discuss on Sunday are seeing if we understand all information on the timesheet such as the headings and see if there is a correlation between each timesheet and the type of employee. I hoping by the end we have a lot of questions for Monday's client meeting so then everything is fully understood.

Finally, the meet and greet event is here. It was a fantastic event to be honest despite what other people are saying. Food was great and with free drinks you can't go wrong. Met a variety of people such as other projects, other clients and really got to speak on a different level with our client representatives. Speaking with our client, learnt a lot more about their organisation and the services they are providing to their clients. It is just amazing at what they provide and how much they really do commit and care for their clients. Got to meet a few other clients and spoke about their systems they were requiring. Just interesting to the huge varieties of needs for different organisations. Also got to meet more students that were completing their projects and got to hear a lot of stories about their issues and how they dealt with them. One student that stood out in my mind was Victoria. She is completing the 6 month project and really is inspirational at how much work is put in to complete the unit. I know myself that those type of deadlines would be daunting and stressful but I guess if I was to be put in the position, I would push myself to perform. Exchanges a number of business cards around to a few people, even with Graham Farr who is the head of Caulfield IT Faculty. He was fantastic, gave a real interest into what we had to say about our projects and commented on our commitment towards our project for getting business cards.

And may I say how great it was to see POD and Jake were in their suits and when looking back at the photos I took, I found this rather peculiar photo of POD. Have a look at it by Clicking here.

One of the valuable skills I learnt from the night was just meeting new people. I always thought of myself as a bit of a shy person when it comes to those types of things but I amazed myself at how well I committed to it. I think I am bit of a natural now haha.

Seminar

This week's topic was Time Management, a very important topic for project management. Although I had learnt time management in project management subject last year, there were a few new things that could prove valuable for this project. So mostly the lecture was about use of Gant Charts which I am already familiar about, Projects never take as long as expected and techniques in allowing enough time in case of problem. The main thing that I most got out of it is that when estimating time, you need to ensure that you are not basing the project on a 24 / 7 basis. An example used was back in the old days with Accenture, they were given beds, free Pizza and drinks in their office but couldn't understand why they weren't happy. Being realistic, they want to take it one step at a time, not be pressured to code for 12 to 16 hours, it's just not possible. I need to take this into consideration as well with other commitments other students have to other subjects and work. Also a formula to schedule certain parts of the project can be quiet useful.

Other News

Met Neil Brand for the first time and discussed exactly what was going on, how he had set up his mail server and also met Hash that I also will be dealing with. They use to a apart of a large company and then were downsized dramatically so there is only 2 of them mostly. So anyway some things that I may be doing is for sure fixing this spam problem and few small things for Hash. These things are like improving his performance on his PC and having an issue with Lotus Spread Sheets all of sudden are Locking up the system when other applications are running. Not sure how to fix the last problem but I think I'll give it a try.

Had a unit test for Enterprise programming and believe I should have done better. I think it has made realise that I have always had problems with programming and exams or tests and think it's time to do something about it. I put so much effort into everything and having a few bad marks disappoints me a lot. Time to make a difference.

Looking positive for the next week to come, hope to improve and move forward with what has happened and learn from my mistakes.

Till next week