Re: Do you voluntarily develop long-term projects on the job?

[John Fleming <johntwrl -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 18:43:34 -0400, while chained to a desk in
the scriptorium, JPosada -at- book -dot- com (John Posada) wrote:

> $I know that most of us are up to our eyeballs in keeping up with the
> $incoming workload.
> $
> $However, I'd like to know how you approach working on side projects that
> $require long term development before introducing tem to your boss.

I recently did a 44-page proposal to make an enhancement (i.e.,
"correction") to the methodology used to generate the numbers for
an internal report.

By the time my own number crunching on the impact of the change
eas done, I had an Excel workbook with close to 400 worksheets
covering five years worth of data.  (The boss still doesn't know
about the workbook.)  Not everything from the workbook found its
way into the proposal.

We'd been producing this internal document using a methodology
that slightly overstated our results for close to fifteen years
and previous attempts by others to get it modified had met with
no success.

Drawing on the experience of others, I determined what the larger
issues were and wrote the proposal to address these concerns.
Then I brought my coworkers into the picture, getting them to
review my work.  It helped give them part ownership.

Then we arranged a meeting with the boss so we could present this
thing.

I knew we'd won the boss over when, a few days later he came by
and asked me to make a few changes to the proposal so he could
present it to his boss.

It took a bit of work, but in the end we got what we wanted.

--
John Fleming
Technical Writer
Edmonton, Alberta