Today, I work as an IT Manager at a Mobile Content Provider company. My team include 7 persons including me. All with programming background such as Delphi, Visual C++, Visual Basic, ASP .NET and J2ME. Using SQL Server 2005 as a company database.
Nobody has experience in implementing project management and software development life cycle. All of the system and software products are built based on adhoc process. Every project needs one man show or we call it hero. If that man goes to other company i will bet the project will fail. No documentation at all.
In that company almost there is no business process. If there is something wrong with system or even PC or customer complain. The employee of other department only has one business process to solve it e.g. call IT person. Even water in dispencer if there is empty, they call IT. Buy food in the evening, just call IT person.
But, the company is growing fast and earn big revenue. So many project or software product already launch and go to the market. All is controlled by Korean guy, a very powerfull and smart person. But, he only knows IT very small. No experience in IT. but good business man. He encourages the employee to be an profesional. How to be an professional ? I remember two thing. One is “Talk with Number” and the other is “Don’t Say Maybe”
Talk with number means every statements should be quantitative. For example, It’s wrong if you say, today traffic is little. You have to say today traffic 50% lower than usual. Another example, you can’t say the server is busy. You have to quatify it, like the server know consume 90% of CPU process.
Don’t say maybe means there is only yes or no, there no between those. For example, you can’t say the problem maybe caused by bandwidth is full, you have to say the problem is caused by bandwidth is full.
Since last year, I take master degree of Information Technology at University of Indonesia. I learn a lot of teory. I try to implement the theory at the company. But it’s very hard.
Now, I give a training of UML & rational unified process to on of IT member. and I already take project management training last year.
My vision this year is, implement project management, make the IT team collaborate and work as a team while building a project using the powerfull of UML and maybe agile or rational unified process.
Wish me luck… and to be continue.
