kenw writes up these year end thoughts, which I think is a good way of ushering in the New Year instead of New Years resolutions that are unlikely to be met.

This year, due to APDIP closing down, I found myself inreasingly in the role of IOSN project manager. Previously I've always played the role of the grunt, doing everything and anything to get the job done. A fellow colleague once mentioned the task as firefighting. Every day, there is an emergency, and day in and day out, we have to deal with it. When you're in this situation, you don't get the bigger view, and I was often criticised for not being able to prioritise tasks. How the hell do I prioritise when there are fires burning everywhere?

Being on the other side, and seeing the complete picture made me understand all the issues better. If there is any notable personal change in the past year is ability to learn and apply time management skills. It's not an overnight process, and I'm happy with my personal progress so far. Some more points I've learnt, while on the management side:

• Reports matter. Technical reports, summaries etc. Somebody needs to to see what you've done. And they need to see what's been done for a whole lot of projects. Manage time to get them done, or automate them somehow. (tip use wiki's)
• Communications matter. You have to learn to manage your emails and other communications. Sometimes even a short email, SMS will do - "I'm aware of this, but busy with X, will get to it tomorrow.". This helps people above you, also manage their projects. Ok X will be held up for a day, therefore we're not going to get Y and Z until next week, which means they need to inform probably a lot more people than you who are also stressed out about the project. Heck it's important to do this to your peers and personal life too. Think about coming back late, and not informing your significant other beforehand. For all they know, you could be in hospital with an emergency. It's also very stressful when nobody responds from a project for weeks on end. (tip, organise prioritise communications as tasks)
• Follow up on it. I now have payments due from people that are almost half a year late now. I also have people who have been to Europe on exchange grants, who have not submitted anything back. Can you imagine, paying a shop USD50 and not getting anything? You would would feel ripped off right? Well a lot of people seem to think it's ok to take USD2K meant for the FOSS community and share nothing back. Now imagine if you were in charge of USD300K or more, what would you expect in return when giving away that much money? (tip be aware of how much people have invested in you)
• Quality matters. We're not in primary school, where you get bonus points for "trying". Others will be evaluating you with what you give to them, whether it's training, reports, code or other services. (tip polish and presentation matters, it's suprising how easy it is to see the extra effort)
• Even though different things have different priorities, treat everyone equally. If a student is organising an event and has invited you, if you're too busy, still contact them in due time to let them know. The event may have lower priority, but everyone deserves courtesy of a response. If possible try to make it. I'm happy that most in FOSS community are like this. (tip be most excellent to each other)

Looking at myself from the other side, it was not very flattering. I have to thank pusakat for pointing me to Time Management for Sysadmins. This book helped me a lot. As stated before, it's a continous process and I hope to keep improving.

For those that are just starting out, keep this alternative view in mind. My experience has shown, that even if you make a small effort towards addressing some of these issues, you will stand out professionally.

Happy New Year