The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley: Second day back reflection

Today turned out to be fairly typical of a day in the office. Here’s how it played out:

Arrive in the office at about 8:45. Say hi to a few folks, and get my laptop booted up. Write a short blog post looking forward to today…

9:00-10:00

Plan: 15 minute review at 9:30

Actual: Process a bunch of emails and fix a niggling problem with my laptop setup (yes! progress!). Also agree to attend a meeting at 12:00-13:00. Review delayed by 10 minutes, but mercifully short. I contact my manager at 9:53 for a brief chat before my meeting at 10:00.

10:00-11:00

Plan: 1 hour teleconference review.

Actual: Review delayed by 20 minutes as I had a short queue (of 2) form at my desk while on the phone to my manager. Set up a meeting for 13:00 today, and another for 11:00. Further delay to start of review thanks to required update to a tool I need to complete the review.

11:00-12:00

Plan: Discuss a project with the delivery programme manager who was second in the queue at 10:00

Actual: I see him fleeing past as I try to finish the teleconference review. He looks like he’s on the way to another meeting… Finish review at about 11:20, further 10 minutes to complete write up: thankfully I was documenting as I went. Note to self: screen-sharing is a critical tool for this type of review. Search for delivery programme manager, only to find him engrossed in the meeting he was fleeing to.

12:00-13:00

Plan: Meeting with another project team on progress and approach. (Actually, my original plan was Lunch, but there you go.)

Actual: I’m a few minutes late, but this is more or less on plan

13:00-14:00

Plan: Meeting with a colleague to discuss approaches to the application for which he has technical responsibility

Actual: Ask if we can delay for a few minutes to give me chance to get lunch. Eventually delay by 30 minutes. It would have been less, but I end up sitting for 5 minutes in the wrong room next door to the room that we’re in. Productive meeting which will continue tomorrow.

14:00-16:00

Plan: 2 hour meeting with customer

Actual: A useful meeting where I get a flavour of discussions that are going on within the customer’s organisation (typical for this meeting). We get through the agenda with about 30 minutes to spare (also typical), so I get some time to progress a couple of unexpected laptops which appear on my asset register. It turns out these are from people who have resigned, and I need to do something with them. Laptops located and plans made to dispose of them. Finally also speak to the Delivery Programme Manager I was supposed to speak to at 11:00. Have a very productive discussion which gives me a fair idea how I’ll be spending all my time over the next two to three weeks.

16:00-17:00

Plan: Nothing! Time to catch up on stuff.

Actual: Discussions with the architect for the project I’ll be working alongside for the next few weeks, and with the account chief architect.

Finally left the office at about 17:20, thinking “Where did the day go?”