Nerd Guru

Because technical people need good soft skills to get ahead.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Making yourself easy to be scheduled: Part 7 - Final Thoughts

Being dependable on task estimates makes you look good to those in power, who have a tendency to remember who lets them down and who comes through when it counts. If you consistently deliver when you say you will you become eligible for more responsibility later on. Because of this, accuracy in task duration estimates is a crucial building block to a blossoming career. If you cannot be counted on to complete work when you say you will, more complex responsibilities and the even greater rewards that come with them will never be challenges you are faced with. When you demonstrate the ability to deliver on time, you will next be given the opportunity to prove yourself with more complex problems across a wider scope. Other chapters in this book can help you with the details of more responsibility, but without mastery of the most basic element presented here, you will never get the chance.

Establishing that foundation of predictability goes hand in hand with preparation for your performance evaluation through the task logging daily exercise. When you force yourself to record how you spent your day, you have a historical record you can refer to when a similar task comes up at a later date. Just about every kind of problem has been solved before. It is up to you to notice the patterns specific to you and the kind of work you do so that you can achieve more consistent delivery on new projects. As a bonus, you will give yourself a wealth of information from which to make your performance evaluation argument.

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posted by Pete Johnson @ 9:50 AM   0 comments

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