I don’t know about you, but sometimes I struggle with deadlines. Procrastinators of the world unite! …tomorrow. As I’ve gotten older and been “out in the real world” as my parents like to say, I’ve definitely gotten better, but it hasn’t been easy. Here’s a few tips to help you stay on top of your assignments, projects, and work:

1. Put it in your calendar.

Wherever you track your meetings or assignments (preferably electronic, so you can set reminders!) put an event on the due date and set multiple reminders (I like to do two reminders: 1 week in advance and 3 days in advance).

2. Start. The work. Early.

When you start projects early, there is so much less pressure! Start early enough, and that 3-day reminder is just a “final touchups” reminder, and not an “oh no! I only have 3 days to do this project!”

3. Set timers.

Sometimes it can be hard to sit at a computer and write a whole presentation/project/paper at a time. You need structure! Set an appropriate amount of time, and then work hard. 45-60 minutes of nonstop, non-interrupted (to the best of your ability) work, and then a 10 minute stretch your legs /get a glass of water break. If your presentation or project is in multiple parts, establish a rough timeline for those pieces and do the same thing – 20 minutes to write the introduction/opening slides; take a quick break; 30-45 minutes to work on the body/first few slides; take a break and walk your pet; 30 minutes to write a conclusion/closing slides; take a break.

Note: Be sure to stretch your legs and eye muscles – sitting and staring at a computer all day every day isn’t good for your body!

4. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Sometimes we miss deadlines. Sometimes we have to push proposals/presentations/meetings because we’re not as prepared as we’d like to be. Sometimes life gets in the way. That’s ok! We’re all human. As long as it’s not a repeated behavior, having to push a meeting here or there is not the end of the world. Don’t let it ruin your day or week. Apologize for any inconvenience and get right back into it – maybe after you play with/walk your dog for a few minutes to get some serotonin/dopamine!

5. Celebrate the big ones.

And the small ones – who’s counting? When you turn in, publish, push send on that really important email, close out a presentation – celebrate. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for completing it. I sometimes find myself ranting to my partner about a really tough project I’ve been working on and even if she doesn’t understand a word about it (and vice versa – she’s in finance, I’m in application services) when I tell her I’m finished, I get an “I’m so proud of you” that the sent, saved, or published icon never seems to get right.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions (in the comments section below)! And remember to subscribe (check out the widgets on the side)!

My door is always open.

Leadership (noun)
Embedding the capacity for greatness in the people and practices of an organization, and decoupling it from the personality of the leader.

Please forgive my terrible pun of a title. One of my coworkers (shout out Iwan, leader of the Service Reliability Architects (SRA)) recently shared with me a video of Former-Captain David Marquet’s talk on Leadership. If you have an extra 24 minutes or so, please take the time to watch the video.

It’s one of those talks where, by the end of it, the listener is inspired – inspired to work, inspired to lead. I was working while listening to this the first time, and I remember chuckling at some of David Marquet’s anecdotes, and having a few really thought provoking moments. David talks about how when he was first promoted to Captain a submarine, he trained for 12 months on every detail of the USS Olympia, a very specific submarine, but at the last minute, was reassigned to the USS Santa Fe; he didn’t know the ins and outs of the Santa Fe the way he did the Olympia. But his crew knew their jobs. Instead of barking orders, especially since he wasn’t totally sure how everything on the submarine worked or ran, he let the crew take charge. He literally stopped giving orders. The crew stopped bringing him problems sans solutions; they stopped saying ‘I recommend…’ they stopped saying ‘I would like to…’ and they started saying ‘I intend to. . . .” Everything changed – this submarine went from the worst performing submarine in the fleet to the highest score for operating a submarine in the history of the navy. 

Iwan and I had just left an SRA Sprint Demo, where the SRAs show off the cool new things they’re doing/developing to improve our products and product Cloud Maturity (ability for products to function on the Cloud instead of on premise; Software as a Service). The first demo of the call was incredible to watch – the automation, the streamline, the problems it promised to solve. I can’t get into specifics (partially due to lack of understanding technical aspects), but suffice to say this demo was revolutionary for Infor. Iwan messaged me after the call and asked how I liked the demo – a lot of it went over my head, but I told him it was fascinating. Iwan then shared a piece of advice I will never forget:

This is what happens when managers don’t tell people how to do their jobs, but explain where they want to go.

Some of my favorite lines from David Marquet’s talk:

“Going into combat? Not scary. Admitting you don’t know something when you’re the Captain of a nuclear submarine? Scary.”

“I now think these words ‘I don’t know’ are the most important words a leader can say. Because those are the words that open the door to learning.”

Please feel free to reach out with any questions (in the comments section below)! And remember to subscribe (check out the widgets on the side)!

My door is always open.

Some common abbreviations/acronyms used in this post:
JQL – Jira Query Language, the most powerful and flexible way to search for your issues in Jira; for everyone: developers, testers, agile project managers, and business users
RCC – Release Certification Checklist
BODs – Business Object Documents
GA – Generally Available
MSF – Manufacturing Solutions Framework; our product system of record – where we manage and maintain product, suite, and third party product information, as well as maintain product SKU information.

I log into my workstation generally between 0730 and 0800 every morning – most days with a freshly brewed cup of coffee, but if I’m running late, I opt for a Red Bull instead. 

My first task of the day: go through my unread emails, respond to anything I can, complete small tasks, add larger tasks to my calendar “To Do” list. 

My second task of the day: take my dog out for his morning walk and then feed him. He likes to sit on the recliner in my office during the day, supervising.

My third task of the day: log into our company Jira and open the “My Open Issues” filter, JQL query: “assignee = currentUser() AND resolution = Unresolved order by updated DESC” to see what’s on my agenda for the morning. For example, a typical morning will have multiple requests for Major and/or Minor RCCs and a few BOD tickets – and might look something like this:

There are other types of templates I deal with, like Admin and Rebranding, but those are generally once a year (Admin) or relatively uncommon (Rebranding, for when a product is being Rebranded). 

Now that I’m caffeinated and have my action items organized, it’s Go Time:

Our Release Certification Checklist has been refined over the years to continuously offer the most direct, succinct, and straight forward path to certification – in as few tickets or “tasks” as possible. When I open a request ticket, the first thing I do is click the “Start Progress” button, so the person who requested the RCC knows I’ve picked it up and started working on it. I read through any extra information they may have included in the description of the ticket – some teams ask for extra tickets. Then I open the attached Macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet (the RCC) and fill in the “Admin” cells:

(Jira) Project key, Product name, Fix version / GA Date, etc

Depending on their answers within the header of the template, I alter the amount of tickets that will get issued.

Release Type: Major (more tickets) / Minor (less tickets)
Deployment Method: Multi Tenant, On Premise, etc

I do a few housekeeping steps – ensure there’s a Fix Version in MSF that matches to the release; ensure the summary lines of the tickets are all identical (“Product A – ###”, where ### is the Version); ensure each ticket is numbered for the Macro. When all of that is done and the template is ready to go, I input the User ID and Password of the Jira Service Account we use for processing into the Macro and away she goes! I then grab the hyperlink of the Fix Version in the project (where the tickets just got issued!), and paste it into the Request ticket with a comment of:

Tickets have been issued: hyperlink.  Thank you!

And close the ticket. Then I move on to the next ticket until all tickets in my queue have been processed!

Please feel free to reach out with any questions (in the comments section below)! And remember to subscribe (check out the widgets on the side)!

My door is always open.

Some common abbreviations/acronyms used in this post:
RCC – Release Certification Checklist
RCM – Release Certification Manager
Dev – Development
BODs – Business Object Documents
MSF – Manufacturing Solutions Framework; our product system of record – where we manage and maintain product, suite, and third party product information, as well as maintain product SKU information.
GA – Generally Available

I work within Application Services, or more specifically, the Release Certification and Governance team at Infor*. We lovingly refer to ourselves as the “Gate-Keepers” or, more quietly, the “RCC Police.” As a unit, we “police” all product releases; we uphold and improve policies and processes that ensure we are able to meet commitments we have made to our customers, especially in regards to training, documentation, functionality, security, etc. My technical position is Business Analyst, and I work alongside Dev Project Directors, Dev Project Managers, Industry & Solution Strategy Directors, Quality Assurance Managers, and all manners of Product Development; when I describe my particular job to my friends, I like to call myself the “grunt” of my team – which is by no means a negative term. My main tasks, day-to-day, are processing RCC requests, processing BOD tickets, maintaining MSF data, and working on/improving current processes within Release Certification. I run reports, gather data, occasionally do data entry, and of course support the RCM’s in their endeavor to certify releases. 

The majority of the processing parts of my job are done within Jira, a project management tool developed by Atlassian. All of our products going through Release Certification must have an RCC for each release in their Jira Project. Each RCC has a number of tasks (the exact amount is dependent upon the size of the release: Major, Minor, or Maintenance) that must be completed well before GA, at GA, or sometimes post GA. Most of my coworkers, at least that I work directly with, are Jira Users, meaning they have basic privileges within the system. I was recently “upgraded” to Jira Administrator – so I have all kinds of power. I promise to not let it go to my head. I have become the go-to person within my team (and other teams) for help with Jira. Even some of the Education department and Information Development teams have asked me to help them with Filters (a way to view, categorize, and sort Jira tasks) and Dashboards (a page for gadgets that display Filters in more aesthetically pleasing ways than a list). While I am always learning better ways to utilize Jira, and still have a ways to go to becoming a Jira Master, this is easily one of the best things I can add to my resume: 

Emma VanDerLeest, Business Analyst & Jira Administrator.

*Infor is a global leader in business cloud software products for companies in industry specific markets. Infor builds complete industry suites in the cloud and efficiently deploys technology that puts the user experience first, leverages data science, and integrates easily into existing systems.