February 2014 Goals
2014 Release Planning
I am about 75% there! Most of the plan is done and we are currently working as if it is set and stone. However, I have one customer that pushed back our meeting and our organizational overview was schedule for the end of this month. I’m not expecting a lot of changes but I’m sure we’ll have a few shifts in priority.
Data, Data, Data
We have some lingering, as in never quite done, projects that I need to push to completion this month. One is an extract from an existing production warehouse to another consolidated enterprise level warehouse that has lost its data validator; pretty common problem when they aren’t interested in moving much less have it on their priority list. The other is a back burner project that isn’t getting much focus from stakeholders which makes me uneasy – if it isn’t of value then we shouldn’t be working on it. Both projects need to be called done so we can shift to the high priority stuff coming in next month.
Yearly Maintenance
This project got paused last month due to a bigger conversion project, it made more sense to focus on the conversion (and retiring the old environment) instead of having to do both. I did get through the planning stages so we really only need to execute some scripts, delete some junk and optimize.
Cross Training
The end of February marks the end of my contractors funding. I absolutely hate losing folks, especially in situations like this where it isn’t voluntary on either side. He’s been an absolutely gem technically, unbelievably prolific in completing projects and is totally integrated into the team. We’re all going to miss him. So this month we’ll be focusing on getting his projects transitioned, doing some cross training on common issues and saying goodbye.
PMI-ACP
I’m scheduled to take the PMI-ACP exam on the 10th of this month, saying that I’m nervous about it is an understatement. Despite about two years’ worth of Agile experience, reading countless books and studying for a good three months now, I’m still only hitting the 80% mark on my practice tests. This is probably the first time in my life I’ve been worried about taking a test.
Taarradhin 