Control Freak?
Christine had emailed me this morning in response to my previous blog. Basically the gist of her email was:
- stop putting so much pressure on myself and start delegating the work
- start trusting your other team members to do their job
- its not my fault if a project doesn't work out
I know and agree to all of the above. We were chatting away, and the conclusion is that I am a control freak. Back at Access, we had a great routine between the fulltimers. Because we had worked together for so long and know each others strengths and weaknesses, we had developed a sort of trust and expectation of each other. Our strengths covered each others weaknesses. We were able to be given the most unrealistic deadline, and between the few of us, we would always egt the work done with the highest quality.
The only problem we had was when we had new people in the company. Unfortunately, a majority of the company was built of casual employees or contractors. That meant, either they would work once a month, or work a few weeks and then quit, and even worse, work for a few weeks, get sent to a clients office and come back 6months or even a year later. It became too hard to train people. We were also so short staffed at one stage, we hired every Tom, Dick and Harry who basically screwed up more than they did things right. There was a period where a few of us would stay back most nights cleaning up after their mess.
Recounting all of this to Christine, this is when I realised that I had found the root cause to me being a control freak. Although I would delegate the work, I would rarely ever feel comfortable enough about the quality of the work. Every report, every bug raised, I would check and I would correct it. I would try to explain to the person how it should be done correctly, but after repeating yourself 3 or 4 times, there's just no point. Many of my friends perceive me as a ballbreaker, especially when it comes to work. In fact, I am quite a softie underneath. I don't like yelling at people, I don't enjoy telling them off, and worst of all, I don't like getting people fired. There has only been 1-2 times where I had suggested to management that they need to let that person go.
So this is when I started taking on more tasks. Instead of training and explaining to people who don't want to listen, I would do it myself. Instead of training someone for a week who will get pulled into a clients office for a year, I would do it myself. And in the cases where there ARE people who are actually competent enough to do the work I would STILL do the work myself simply because I can do it in 1/2 the time. Its not that I don't want to delegate and share the workload, but sometimes its just faster to do it myself. And that way, I can guarantee that the quality of work.
This was like a little therapy session via email. I KNOW I need to share the workload and make it easier on myself. I KNOW its not my fault when things go wrong. I am trying to change my mentality that all the responsibility is on me. I have this fear that one day, I'm going to find out that I missed a tiny little thing and end up taking the whole system down. That is why when my manager offered to have 2 of my workmates help me with my current project, I thought it was a great opportunity for a fresh pair of eyes to look over my work. I got the all clear from them on Tuesday night. It was like a weight lifted off my shoulder. Since they have completed that section of the work, it meant that I can focus on the more critical side of the project.
I have been staying back most nights hoping that the project will finish on time. Today, at 2:30, I had printed out the last document and was ready to hand everything over to the Project Manager and give her the all clear. I was going to buy a coffee and a big box of desserts and celebrate with everyone because I am actually a few days ahead of schedule. Just as I was about to hand the documents over, I had a quick scan of the work completed and realised there was one more LITTLE section that my workmates didn't complete. I told them to leave it since it was close to 6pm on Tuesday and that I would finish it. Thinking its a quick 5min job, I thought I'd do that before I talked to the PM.
As I was going through the work, I can feel the blood draining from my face. They had missed something. Both of them. Multiple times. This could invalidate everything I had just done and signed off on. I didn't know whether to burst into tears or start chucking a tantrum. I have been working my butt off night after night including weekends for the past few weeks, slowly making progress. But if I had to redo everything from scratch, I'm pretty sure I would've thrown the biggest tantie and then burst into tears. Our whole team had a huge panic attack and started checking people's availability for the weekend etc etc. Luckily, going through the problem with my manager, she's happy if I just redid 1/10 of the work that we had expected to do.
The irony struck me like someone slamming my face with a pan. The day I realised that I am a control freak and decided to start trusting other people to do my work and share my workload, is the same day where all my fears came true. The very reason why I take on so much work and put so much pressure on myself reared its ugly head today. There is a reason why I put so much pressure on myself. There is a reason why I take on so much extra work. There is a reason I am the way I am. And I am a control freak...and I'm proud of it.
5 comments:
Babe, sorry to burst your bubble...but it didnt start from Access...
Enver and I was talking last night...and it all really started with our final projects at Uni...
Remember how B had his "issues" with the girl...Our endless phone calls to try and help him get over it and motivate him to do the programming...trying to get our hands on the code to test it...and then you&me running around the city trying to find a kinko's opened at 1:30am on a f@#$ing Sunday night?
And remember how in our final ISYS project, *unoknowwho* - our PM, left the group and you and I had to basically do the project all by ourselves?
It was the fear of f@#$ing up then that turned you into a controlling freak...and it was the cultivation at Access that heightened everything to the MAX!!!
And now, i find out that im a control freak too, but not on your level...YET!
=P
Hey Lils!
I think your one of these: Workaholic :)
I guess in our profession, a lot of us can be considered having OCD (we're obsessive compulsive in one way or another). We want to test the product so that _WE_ are completely happy with it, but the reality is, the scope of it is truly limited by time (budget,deadlines) and the competency of the developers ;)
I'm a bit of a control freak myself, so I know what your thinking (how horrible!), but initially what you have to do is to train them, constantly keep an eye on them to make sure that they're doing the right thing, let them do things themselves. Then, when your happy that they're competent enough, you can start delegating tasks to them, and if they fuck up, they stay back to fix it.
Remember back at Access, you said you were going to "take over the world" slowly, you've got to do the same here. Although you can't pick the staff you work with (can you?), spend time with them to make sure they know exactly what your requirements are. The time spent doing that more that works out later on (unless you've got a high staff turn over, in which case I'd suggest you stop whipping them that often :).
The thing that you've got to keep in mind with project schedules and things like that, is that further project schedules may be based on the performance of current/past projects, and from a management point of view, I know that they won't look at the hours spent on the project.
They'll see that they set aside a few months for the project, and the project finished on time, so they'll see that as vindication that they're estimation of the effort involved is right, even though some people on the project worked like slaves so that it'll finish on time. So what ends up happening is that management gets the impression that to do a set of work, it'll only need to take "x" amount of days. So the cycle of you working long hours will appear again.
This has happened before at Access, and what we used to do was to absorb the cost, and the next time a project got scoped, we remembered that to do Project "X" we ended up spending "y" amount of time, instead of "z" days quoted (y > z :P), and we factored that into the new project estimates.
From KPI of view, keep a detailed track of any delays you've encountered during testing, subtract that out from the actual hours worked, and see if your on schedule for YOUR component of the project. If you are, then I would be happy with that - if anyone says that 'testing' is delaying the project, then all you have to do is to whip out the log, and kick some ass.
Hope the above helps, you probably know it already, but it's sometimes good to hear it from someone else.
We should catch up sometime.
Cheers,
Ka0s.
Christine: ahhhhhh yes...uni...I had totally forgotten about that....repressed memories and all. But trust me, I was NOT a workaholic at uni. In case you had forgotten, instead of staying back after class to work on assignments etc, I was at BBs having coffee or off filming something. We CRAMMED. The only difference was ISYS since we knew how much trouble we were in already with *someone* plagurising in our reports and then quitting the team and all.
Chao: In theory yes. Thats how it should all work. In reality, things don't always go that way. Its particularly hard since I personally don't get to scope a project. Alot of that is done by the manager. Most of the time she is accurate in her estimation, but there is one thing she has forgotten to factor in. Who is the developer.
We have some outstanding developers who do everything to the book. They never pass anything onto UAT unless its been thoroughly unit and system tested with the code reviewed etc. Yes thats good, but sometimes that means we don't get to start UAT on time. Then you have the developers who "unit test" and "system test" and what you get is a pile of dog's breakfast.
The diff between Access and here, is Access has a legally binding contract that state when things are to start and when things are to end with the option to increase the time/effort based on certain criteria. That doesn't apply here. Of course if things are ridiculously bad, we can push back. But things aren't as clear cut as they are for you.
The plus side is that my manager was also a tester before and she understands what we're going through and she will fight for us if she needs to. That is also a different from back in the "old days" where we had test managers who had never worked in the lab and didn't understand the implications of their little agreements they have made with the client without consulting us.
The problem we had here wasn't necessarily a matter of training. It was basically down to the fact that I have better eyes than them in spotting things (hard to believe considering how blind I am usually). I'm now called "Eagle eyes" at work.
I just remember the time we had back at Access where we just couldn't train anyone. Everyone would get pulled off after a week or 2 onto another project and you won't see them for 6months. They'll come back and everything they've learnt they've either forgotten, or we've changed the process.
For those who actually got the process down pat, they were obviously the "good testers" who were the most likely to get pulled onto a project to impress the clients. Or those who are hired, get 3 days training in the lab and then get sent offsite. They do a great job offsite, but *some people* expect them to come back to the lab and continue their great work despite not even getting proper training in the first place. That is when we rush in to try and fix the project whilst training the people only for them to get pulled offsite again.
I guess for me, alot of my work behaviour came from the way things worked back in Access. We don't have as much as an issue as we do here. I guess thats the plus side of being in a large company, they do follow their procedures to induct people into the work place with the proper training etc. But then, even they aren't immune to the problems that plague all projects.
This looks more like an essay competition than a comments page lol
Where does it say, keep comments to 200 words or less? :D
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