Work…
So… in my post the other day I think I left out a lot of thoughts that need to be detailed. I’m gonna chalk that up to extreme exahustion – it is a good as excuse as any.
So, I came to realize a few things at the end of the team launch process that really made me happy:
- We have REAL manager, who is dedicated (time wise, which is the most important) to just the people in our team. He was with us for 3 days and gave the presentation on our team plan better than anyone I could think of. It is very exciting to have some one that talented working to make our lives better. I think having a qualified person at the helm with allow the rest of us to really do our jobs well.
- Ability to learn. This team has a very unique experience for me — I can choose what I want to learn. I would very much like to dive deeper into debugging Lustre problems, as I have always found myself a very good debugger, as well as learning how to properly manage a software team. Already I am starting to see that our esteemed Team Lead is a different sort from what we are used to here at CFS. Perhaps I will even learn what I am not good at for real, rather than tie that into just not being able to do a certain job at a certain time.
- Structure. Yes I used the “s-word”. The individual details are too many to list out, but I continually see things in the job of a ‘Director of Engingeering’ that have a fixed input and output. I literally would have killed for this a year ago — perhaps I would be in a different place becuase of it. I think there are two very large things that TSP gives a software company. The first is a real managment, reporting, work assignment and tracking, and progress tracking system. The spreadsheet that we use to combine each team members data and view team progress is worth its weight in electrons. Second, just the formal process of reviews and inspections is going to vastly increase the quality of Lustre.
- The face to face meetings were great. It is amazing how smart these people are. Perhaps the most interesting part is how different each person is. I don’t think there are two people on the team I would describe being like another.
- I got some good JSB downloads from the boc. He found that archive.org had a ton of live concerts recorded from (mostly) the sound board at the concert. These live recordings hold a TON of new tracks that have been tickling my ears ever since.
- New people! Weeeeeeee! We have more people to handle work. I am thrilled to welcome these guys to the team, and I look forward to their contributions.
I think that about concludes my thoughts on the team launch. All in all, I am very much looking forward to executing, what I think, is a sane plan. This is not to say that it is not agressive in its goals, but I think the whole team agrees that it is a workable plan. I shall report in soon (being the ever faithful Planning Mananger) on the progress and acuracy of our plan.
