Re: Do you voluntarily develop long-term projects on the job?

[holmegm -at- comcast -dot- net]

John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> wrote:

>However, I'd like to know how you approach working on side projects that
>require long term development before introducing tem to your boss.

Typically, I want to have *something* to show as a working prototype, if 
not a finished product.

I also try to break things into phases or chunks.  For example, we have
static HTML pages of "notifications", in a regular format.  Several are
usually produced each day.  Long term, I'd like to see them be generated 
from a database (why not?), but phase 1 was to make an admin tool that 
just takes the information and spits the static HTML page out.  Phase 2
was to automate the table of contents page that links to these notices
(pretty easy, now that I control the filenames).  Each incremental step
brings benefits and moves things closer to the final goal.

>I've been working on this for about a month and nobody here knows about
>this, though I'll be ready to introduce it in about 2 weeks.

Best of luck!  I hope it is well received.

>Does anyone do this type of thing? If so, do you tell anyone or do you
>surprise them with this?

My pattern so far seems to be, when new on a job, make it a surprise.
After some successes, I can give more, er, foreshadowing of what is to
come.

This is not to be sneaky, but simply because the nature of the beast
is that management doesn't understand all of the issues "on the ground",
the technology involved, etc.  I trust that one of the reasons I was
hired was to improve work processes, without needing guidance every step
of the way.

>If you've done this, what has been the reaction of your management. Do they
>like this/ Do they mind not having been informed every step? This is the
>third time I'm doing something like this here and my manager loves it. 

If whatever it is *really* does save time and/or produce better output,
then management usually loves it.

-- 
Greg Holmes