[thelist] Day-to-day workflow related questions (horror story)

[Tyme]

----- Original Message -----
From: Chris George <chrisg at gsnet.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 4:52 PM
Subject: [thelist] Day-to-day workflow related questions


> I was wondering about day-to-day workflow.  I am now the only Web Designer
> here... I've been struggling over the past couple of weeks in getting some
> project deadlines accurately predicted.  When there was a few of us, there
> was some delegation and some independent project initiation.  The work
> hasn't slowed down (in fact, it's prolly increased), but I find myself
> getting bogged down with tasks that interrupt projects.  I've tried to
> augment how much of my time I allocate to projects (like 80% rather than
> 100%, and so on), but that doesn't work for all days.

TYME} In addition to a full-time client project, I was talked into taking a
"part-time" freelance assignment as Managing Editor for 2 websites of a
large internet publishing company.  My primary duties were to maintain the
website and to coordinate a programmers corrections/changes to the backend
process.  Not only did I have to manage my emails and phone calls to fellow
'team' members, but given the lack of actual team work in this company, I
had to do it twice!  [Horror Story Example #1: 4 email messages...3 voice
messages over the course of 1 week to get a SysAdmin to correct the server
times on 4 servers!]  Rarely was an email message or voice mail message
answered in a timely fashion (within 24-48 hours), if at all.  I found that
the follow-up was the most time-consuming part, second only to my
complaining to the Executive Editor about the appalling lack of
coordination.

TYME} I tried reminding people that it was _suppose_ to be a part-time gig,
and _informing_ them that I would only read/respond to email and phone calls
between the hours of X and Y, but actually, I did so all day long -- knowing
that someone else might be held up from doing their work until they heard
back from me.

TYME}  To make matters worse re: time/tyme management: I am very thorough,
and believe that Customer Service is very important.  So, for the many tech.
support questions (re: the web tool that these sites offered) that the Help
Desk guy could not answer, I would promptly research and resolve the
customer's problem -- requiring me to correct and rewrite lots of crappy
WYSWIG-generated code.

TYME} SOLUTION: Well, short of buying the company and firing the whole
unsupportive lot (which I absolutely would have done), my only choice was to
throw in the towel.  This so-called "part-time" gig was encroaching on my
time for my 2.5-year/full-time/bought-me-a-house/ client.

TYME} The moral of the story is: I have no advice to offer; just
commiserating.  :-)