I’ve been writing about the various pre-go-live activities. Back in December, I wrote about a Day in the Life of An Analyst and thought I would share what my day is like 90 days before a go-live.
I am the type of person who likes to be on top of things. I like to be prepared for meetings. I like to have an agenda and a list of what I will discuss for the meeting. In addition, if I know I will be doing a demonstration, I will prepare a test patient and make sure I have the correct workflow.
My day is never the same everyday. Sometimes, I have early morning meetings and sometimes I don’t have any meetings at all. I will describe my typical Monday.
My typical Monday starts at 8 AM. I begin my morning checking my email and answering the critical ones. Then, I check my calendar just to get a picture of what my day and week will be like. If I don’t have any meetings in the morning and the office is quiet, I will begin my hardest work or work that requires a lot of thinking. Depending on the deadline, I will finish this project before I start another.
Next, I see if there are any defects assigned to me from integrated testing. I check the testing queue and if there are any, I write out a change management ticket in order to be reviewed by the integrated team. The change management meetings are twice a week and if I miss the Tuesdays change management meeting, I have the Thursday meeting to bring my changes in order for it to be approved. The deadline to have the change management ticket is Monday at 5 PM so if I want my changes in on Tuesday, I make sure I have my tickets ready. Before it goes to the change management meeting, my director or team lead will need to read over the ticket to make sure I have everything I wrote is complete.
By the time I have my change management ticket ready (believe me its a time-consuming and rigorous process), lunch time has arrived. I try to have lunch away from my desk but sometimes it is not possible. I do try my best to at least go outside for some fresh air or run and do my errands if I can. It all depends on how late I want to stay that day.
On Mondays after lunch are our weekly team meeting for an hour. I make sure the agenda is completed and print out a few copies so my team member are aware of the agenda items. This meeting is led by the director and outstanding items and information are announced in this meeting. In addition, the workgroups give a synopsis to the team of the plans and activities that particular workgroup is going through.
After my team meeting, is another meeting I usually attend if I am available. It’s my standing security workgroup meeting. In this integrated meeting, all security representatives from all applications (live and not-live) are in attendance and gives a brief overview of any changes their team needs to make. Security is integrated and if one team makes a change it can seriously impact another application team. The security meeting usually lasts an hour or less and after the meeting I go back to my desk and see what is next on my list. If I have another meeting, I usually attend that. If not, I check my list of projects to see what else needs to be done. This will last me the rest of the day and then I will call it a day. And the next day is something new.
