December 31, 2018

Year in Review: 2018

Regular readers will know I enjoy trying out different formats, either to keep things fresh or to experiment and learn. Here’s what I’m doing this year for my yearly wrap-up post:

  • Giving a brief overall reflection with the details at the end
  • Mixing personal accomplishments with professional ones; after all, we bring our personal selves to work

Thoughts

This year was marked with significant learning. To bolster my management and leadership skills, I’ve embarked on the Pluralsight “Communication for Technologists” path, from which I’m already seeing benefits. I’ve also been reading Harvard Business Review for about a year now as well.

I’m pleased that my career change from individual contributor (software development) to more of a leadership/coordinator/operations role has been progressing nicely. It’s given me more opportunities to delegate while learning about how the company as a whole can improve.

Around the mid-year mark, I dipped my toes back into public speaking with a talk I developed several years ago. Although I enjoy the topic and feel I do a decent job at public speaking, I don’t feel I got much return on investment in this category. The response I received was positive, but was considerably underwhelming for me to consider pursuing next year.

I’m particularly proud of my personal accomplishments, including making time for pleasure reading, staying engaged in several aspects of group fitness, and participating in community service. Revisiting my relationship with alcohol has also been a worthwhile endeavor.

Some things on my list for 2019…

  • Find mentors and coaches for my career as I continue to move away from software development day-to-day.
  • Stay active in building more scale models. I have two unopened tank kits ready to go, which is a model type I’ve never tried.
  • Continue to learn more about company-scale quality standards, namely ISO 9001 and CMMI v2.0.
  • Pay off all but one of my student loan lenders (albeit not the majority of my loan amount, but a milestone nonetheless).
  • Have some serious talks with folks inside and outside my company about some medium term objectives for my career (e.g., should I pursue a PMP certification or an MBA?).
  • Finish some “planning” tasks for my family — i.e., all the boring stuff you don’t think about until you need it, such as advanced directives, better emergency plans, and a more thorough home inventory.

Details

Wrote 52 weekly summary posts of articles relevant to my career; although I didn’t sum them up, my estimate is that I’ve shared over 700 articles, books, or videos

Communications training

Community service

  • Served as clerk on a Board of Trustees
  • Played piano and accompanied a choir for dozens of worship services
  • Voted in primaries and mid-term elections
  • Provided piano accompaniment for a regional Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) service
  • Picked up litter around my apartment complex on a weekly basis

Company process

  • Helped DPRA achieve CMMI Maturity Level 3 accreditation
  • Member of the “Lessons Learned / Best Practices” committee
  • Established a bi-weekly JFAST developer lunch
  • Participated in ISO workshops to determine the context of the organization, review issues and risks, draft the quality policy and additional process improvement program objectives, plan the implementation of ISO, and help develop the kickoff presentation.
  • Served in a leadership role in helping DPRA get certified in ISO 9001; this involved coordinating tasks with top management.
  • Elected as chairman of the Management Review Team
  • Worked with CTO on technical review group perception and function, and about how to position the R&D group. Proactively spoke with R&D members to get a better understanding of goals.
  • Wrote company-wide announcement about the quality policy
  • Acted as deputy chairperson for the Software Engineering Process Group while the chairperson was on medical leave
  • Helped pilot a training development program in BambooHR

Group fitness

  • Taught approximately 100 classes throughout the year
  • Launched four RPM releases (77-80) at Knoxville area Gold’s Gyms
  • Copy-edited four RPM releases (79-82) of choreography and instructor materials for Les Mills International
  • Completed AFAA Program Group Exercise certification

Hiring

  • Blog post: Behavioral Interview Template
  • Created a more thorough onboarding checklist for developers
  • Onboarded three full-time developers
  • Interviewed and onboarded several candidates for contract work on JFAST

Personal accomplishments

  • Updated my work wardrobe to be more professional
  • Visited Mexico Beach for vacation
  • Rekindled a hobby of scale model building; actively blogging and making videos about kits I’m making
  • Quit drinking
  • Started journaling; tried lots of variations — bullet journal, positive thoughts, weekly goals, issues I want to focus on, etc.
  • Health maintenance: successful yearly physical, eye exams, and dental checkups
  • Updated my glasses with a new prescription
  • Finished watching all episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation with my wife
  • Met my emergency fund goals; started investing outside of savings and 401(k)

Pleasure reading

  • His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
  • The Power of Vulnerability by Dr. Brene Brown
  • The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
  • Calypso by David Sedaris
  • Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
  • Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
  • The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
  • The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card

Professional learning

Public speaking

  • Lunch-and-learn (Your Playbook) at Pilot Flying J
  • Knox .NET meetup (Your Playbook)
  • Conference talk (Your Playbook) at Scenic City Summit 2018
  • Chattanooga .NET Users Group (Your Playbook)

Work projects

  • Added infrastructure for allowing a service call to be cancelled and to report progress back to the UI; cleanly implemented and documented for other developers.
  • Designed and implemented UI for port complexes
  • Helped determine levels of efforts for epics on the JFAST contract recompete
  • JFAST Features: transload (airport capacities, reporting), multi-seaport complexes, PowerPoint generation (airlift and sealift profiler slides, nodal workload reports)
  • Created JFAST architecture overviews to expedite the onboarding of new developers
  • Worked with my tech lead on architectural goals for the next version of JFAST
  • Acted as Scrum Master for a team, helping to coordinate work items, manage risk, and keep communication flowing