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1. Last minute deadlines: (I'm talking hours, sometimes; for major
projects, less than a week; or what's worse, the ASAP which means someone's
constantly breathing down your neck)
2. The project that's scheduled and time budgeted without input from me.
(The full-blown help system with context sensitive help, which someone's
estimated will require no more than 150 hours)
Both of the above are stressful because, along with the obvious, it is
really tough to do a good job and so while the requestor may be grateful
that you got it done on time, the errors do not go unnoticed and
uncommented. There's really nothing more stressful than sending out product
with major flaws, just for the lack of another day or two.
A solution for the above two is to nail down exactly what can be
accomplished in the time allowed and communicating this to the requestor.
For the ASAP deadline, nailing down a time)
3. Not having any feedback from users. This has never been an option for
me. User testing is virtually non-existent, and when our staff travel to
meet the clients, I'm never one of the party. As a result, I have to rely
on what I can glean from those who did meet users. I make guesses based on
my assumptions based on my colleagues assumptions. I don't know how to
resolve this issue.
4. Not having enough technical knowledge. No matter how much I learn, I
never catch up to everyone in my office (we do a lot of r&d, most are
extremely technical). I know I'm not supposed to be at expert level for all
subjects, but the result is that every conversation I have puts me at a
disadvantage. I don't know how to resolve this issue.
5. The new hire who's first words to me are about the typo he found in a
training manual. His comment that it seems to be a good typing job. It's
true, the typo's there and I let it slip through. I'm at fault. This is
stressful because I want not to make an issue about it, and so it ends up
being a slow education process about what I really do.
_______________________
sella rush
applied technical systems
silverdale, wa
developers of CCM knowledge discovery
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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