Work

This blog was going to be a review of the scotch tasting last night. But it's not. Instead it's going to discuss my job. An almost unheard of thing in my ramblings about beer, whisky and music.

As many of you know I recently departed the world of science for the world of IT, in which I've dabbled for some time. Dipping my toes, but refusing to get anything more than soggy socks. My disgust at the state of science, and organisation thereof in NZ, caused me to apply for a Team Leader role. Which I got, and am enjoying. Full immersion to continue the watery analogy.
One reason for the hiring was to implement a knowledge base - using KCS methodology. Basically it's knowledge base management but from calls/incidents in real time and everyone gets to create the entries, and depending what status you are, some people get to edit others' entries. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it relies on everyone doing stuff (not just one person) and getting feedback and keeping the solution simple.

I think it's going well. We've discovered we do *a lot* more than we thought we did, which means we're still in the creation phase, rather than re-use phase of the entries.

What has been interesting is peoples response to this, as it is a paradigm change for some of them. Our ServiceDesk had had a complete turnover of staff, so they were in a WTF is going on here phase, so convincing them of the use was easy. My lot were more sceptical, about half of them thought it was a good idea. Some of the others just did it cos knew I'm not likely to let go of things if I think they are a good idea. And some were grumpy cos they like to hoard knowledge and be known as 'the expert' which is what I wanted to break. I didnt' see any wins there, and figure all of the team should be able to do, in theory, anything. Hells bells, I wrote one of these entries and got my boss (who is sooo not technical) to test it, by configuring server stuff.

The last couple of weeks I've been gathering data and putting it into various reports/charts for various presentations my boss and I are working on. This is where we found out we do far more than we thought. And at the meetings where we've been promoting some of the people to the 'you can edit others entries' phase, there have been some very unhappy campers. So many of them didn't get that the crux of this was formatting. It's all well and good writing a feckin' novel how to fix a problem - but if you can't write it so someone else can follow steps. What's the point?
The funniest was one of the non-english speakers (my boss likes hiring them, cos they make her laugh...) who we promoted above someone who thought he was excellent (he's not). Her explanation "I wrote them so I could follow them" was exactly the point.

So yeah I'm enjoying this at the moment. A mixture of analysis, cajoling, violence, manipulation and dictatorship. It all seems to fit my personality.

We did a presentation to a group of Wgtn support people this afternoon, which was interesting as well. the ones who see knowledge as a 'something we should do' vs those who see it as a cornerstone of support was quite obvious.

I'm writing this while listening to Albinoni Oboe concerti. As some CDs arrived which are going to take some time to absorb: Albinoni Oboe concerti; Calexico (new one); bob dylan bootleg v8; Rush snakes and arrows live; Telemann concerti; Lilburn Symphonies. And I hope the new Marillion arrives in the next day or so.

I'm also reading Sandman again. Ahhhh lovely. Back to that now.

Love, me