Thursday, May 26, 2005

Still Adjusting

When I was first promoted to the position of business analyst a little over a month ago, I thought that not a lot would really change from when I was just the company’s technical writer. At first there wasn’t a lot of changes, but now I’m starting to realize all the extra stuff that comes with the position… and I’m not even fully into the role yet.

The first major difference is the scope of the tasks I have. As a technical writer I usually had one or two projects that I was working on at any one time (usually only one) and they were pretty large in scope. I’d have a manual to write or release notes to put together or something of that nature. It was easy to stay focused on one thing because I only really had one thing to do.

Now, I have so many small things to keep track of. Dealing with customer needs and wants, putting together software requirements, creating mock-ups, continuing to do a lot of my technical writing work from before (since they didn’t hire anyone to take up that position after I vacated it), and tons of other little things now make everything about this position a little more hectic.

The other thing that I’m getting used to is having to go to meetings. In the past I never really had a need to go to them, but now they’re used for all kinds of different aspects of my job. I don’t really mind them, but at times it makes it hard to get what you need done done since there’s less hours in a day to do it. I guess I haven’t gotten into the habit of adding in the extra time meetings take when gauging how long it will take me to get a task accomplished.

What I do really like about this new position is the variety of things that I do get to do. No longer am I relegated to writing tasks. I still do that, but I also get to interface with customers, interact with the co-workers on my team more, do some graphic design, decide project specifications, and simply communicate with people more.

I’m sure it’ll only get more hectic as time goes on, but hopefully I’ll become more acclimated to the hustle and bustle by that time. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually get good at what I’m doing and learn to turn the heavier workload into something that actually benefits me. Crazier things have happened.

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