The most recent in the series of good questions that James McGovern fires off daily on his weblog is “what is the breakdown of your daily work?”
Hmm. Let me think, so this year, it has been probably something like
- Analyst/strategist: 40% (see Todd Biske’s definition for what do I mean by this)
- Technical delivery manager: 20% (a bit like project manager, but focused on content/solution rather than on process; perhaps something like Implementer?)
- Change champion: 10% (Badgers various people from VPs to lowly techies to do things which are common sense. Many people probably do this, but this year it is in my job description!)
- Quality assurance: 20% (Peer reviews strategies, requirements and designs)
- Translator: 10% (Translates from English to English between various teams. Same as Todd’s Team Mediator)
This breakdown changes over time as I work on different assignments. For instance last year, I was spending nearly all my time delivering a major programme, so my split of work looked more like
- Delivery manager: 50%
- Domain expert: 20%
- Quality assurance: 10%
- Translator: 20%
The year before I spent most of the time developing strategy, requirements and architecture for the said programme, and here the split was again different
- Analyst/strategist: 50%
- Technology expert: 30%
- Quality assurance: 10%
- Translator:10%
I’d guess it just shows that the work done under the same banner can be different from place to place.