BAsics - Land first, or fall over

Every fortnight I'll be publishing a blog related to my life as a contract BA. I thought it would be a useful exercise to write down some of the different challenges faced and how I managed to overcome them, or work around them. I'll focus on a specific topic or theme and anyone who likes is free to comment, debate or share. It's a bit like what LinkedIn used to be before it became Facebook.

Landing - Day one on a new project

The term, "hit the ground running", is used by almost every contractor I have ever met, I've probably even used it myself. But think about it, have you ever tried to actually hit the ground running? If not, try it. Next time you're trotting down the stairs, jump off the last couple but before you land, start running... Now pick yourself up off the floor, dust yourself down and do the typically British thing of looking around to make sure no-one saw you while laughing away the unbelievable pain in your shin.

When I start a new project at a new organisation I like to use the first day or two for landing. You've had the interviews, seen te job description, and been told what why you're there, now it's time why you're actually here, and what you'll actually need to do. I have 4 objectives from landing:

Find your bearings

As a contractor, you don't usually get the HR / People Team treatment, the walk around the office to find out where everything is etc. There's nothing quite like having the s**t scared out of you by the fire alarm test no-one told you about on a Friday morning while you're making your morning cup of tea. Talking of tea, office brew etiquette. Do you bring your own? Tip into a kitty? If so, who manages it?! Then there's making it, BAs need to communicate with as many people as possible to do the job, so sneaking off to make a 'oner' on your first day, only to return to a bank of people looking at you like they've just caught you in bed with their nan is probably not the best start. Anyway, I digress, but you get the idea. Find out where things are, and how things work, take a little wonder around the office and ask the silly questions. It's different everywhere so taking a little time will help you settle so much faster.

Who’s Who

You won’t remember names at this stage, you’re still worrying about that giant Starbucks you had on the way in and where the toilets are, but it’s a good time to start identifying the faces. I obviously walk round everywhere with my notepad, I’m not an animal, but it doesn’t really help much knowing that one of the million names you scribbled randomly on the 27th or 28th, or was it the 17th page of your pad, incorrectly, is probably the name of the person you’re now speaking to. At this stage it’s just about getting a rough idea who you need to speak to, roughly where they sit, and making a judgment call based on a 5 second introduction about how to interact with them. Scope out their desk, a persons’ desk can tell you a lot about them. Is there a football mug, do they have lots of pictures of cats...

Tools & Technology

I’ve been contracting most of my life and have yet to start a company that has a laptop ready with all the systems needed for the day an employee starts. It’s almost a rule that a new starters' first day, contract or not, is spent on the phone to service desk asking how you get access to email and being built up with “I’ve set that all up for you now…” then knocked down by “… Mr Perkins”, and so the call continues while they remove the incorrect one and repeat the process again for mr Parker, Porkin, and Prakin before you give up and settle on the one they have just set up, only to be known for the rest of your contract as Kelvin Paakers.

You’ll spend most of your first day or two getting through this, I’d recommend doing it though as it’s really annoying finding out all the project information is on a drive you don’t have access to just as you’re in the thick of things. Invest a day and it’ll save you a lot of pain in the future.

Objective

I’ll do a whole blog on objective at some point, but I do like to cover it in my landing stage as it’s funny how much perspective can change objective. Take the implementation of a new CRM for example, the objective is clear from the project manager, implement X… But the project manager reports to the Ops manager, and they’ve got other ideas. “why not make some process improvements while you’re at it and if the system needs to be customised to accommodate them then we should do it” … But the project’s being paid for by the Finance manager, “I want the system to do exactly what we do now as our processes are fine…”.

Having a very quick chat over a coffee with a few of those faces you were introduced to on your first day will give you a chance to do a little digging and understand what direction people want to go in, compared to the direction(s) people are pulling in.

So there you have it. My first few days on a new job, I'll cover getting going next time :)