Anticlue: How do you get work?

June 8, 2004

How do you get work?

Work comes in all variations, I go to the cafeteria, I leave with three assignments. I go to a meeting, I get meetingwork - a not as fun variation of homework. I have these emergency calls which either come to my phone, my pager, or my support queue. I have regulatory releases and system upgrades that magically show up on my desk in a fedex package. I have requests for small projects, and projects for actually large projects.

Work comes in many variations, and I'm wondering how it is handled at your department. How do you quantify and qualify what you are doing?

One of the items that has been proposed is classifying work in different categories.

First, there are emergencies, the server is suddenly displaying a jrun out of memory error or something where business can not continue.

Next there are emergent issues, there is something incorrect in a data transfer from one place to the fifth place down the queue.

Then we have requests, all system upgrades, regulatory releases, report generation, and small projects under 80 hours.

Next we have the project request, which comes with the complete project management methodology.

This is just a proposal, and little glimpse into something that I'm sure happens elsewhere. How do others handle it?

Posted by Elyse at June 8, 2004 6:07 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Rather than classifying a task/piece of work into a category, thus applying a priority to it, I take the 2 main attributes that determine it's priority at that time:

- urgency
- importance

If something is urgent & important, it is top priority. If something is urgent but not important it's 2nd. If something is important, but not urgent, it's 3rd. Finally, the not urgent and not important work is 4th.

Examples in order:
- client's website is down because mySQL broke
- co-worker needs help in debugging a problem (I can make time for him/her because my stuff, although more important, has a later deadline and as long as I don't spend an inordinate amount of time, I'm good)
- project milestone due by end of day
- making a Macromedia Central application to help me to learn to play my Ocarina

Typically, #2 masquerades itself as urgent AND important; depends on the person's wit and charm.

Posted by: JesterXL at June 8, 2004 10:37 AM

...actually, if I remember from my schooling, you should do not urgent + important 2nd, and urgent + not important 3rd.

Posted by: JesterXL at June 8, 2004 11:04 AM

We developed an internal project management system, and we always prioritize everything.

We even now identify what stage of a project, the project is in.

One old schooler, somewhere told me this ancient secret.

"It's in the details, either they'll kill you or save you."

Posted by: Craig M. Rosenblum at June 8, 2004 6:01 PM