I'll call that shot good...
The universe is laughing at me.
I appear to be a pretty good manager. My boss, who doesn't give false praise, has said that not only is he satisfied with my progress on picking up the necessary skills, he thinks I'm picking them up extremely fast.
Thankfully, he's also assured me that I'll be getting back to "real work" at some point, that doing this well doesn't mean I'm going to be consigned to management hell for the rest of my career. (Although, honestly, I can see the day coming within the next five years.)
When I mentioned that I had told one of our West Coast people to hop on a plane next week and come out here Monday through Thursday, and to call the boss if he needed confirmation, the boss said that he has full confidence in my judgment and understanding of the costs involved and that if I think it's necessary, I should order it done without needing confirmation.
Erk.
Still, today we made fantastic progress. I got enough of a design out of these goofballs that I can start getting something concrete down on paper -- a side thing, but one that did need to be specified. I also got a lot more information on the parts that aren't specified yet. Lastly, I directed one of them to stop designing a particular set of functionality to concentrate on documenting something else.
(...honestly, after a night's sleep, it was also much easier to understand the document they sent to us on Monday...)
I appear to be a pretty good manager. My boss, who doesn't give false praise, has said that not only is he satisfied with my progress on picking up the necessary skills, he thinks I'm picking them up extremely fast.
Thankfully, he's also assured me that I'll be getting back to "real work" at some point, that doing this well doesn't mean I'm going to be consigned to management hell for the rest of my career. (Although, honestly, I can see the day coming within the next five years.)
When I mentioned that I had told one of our West Coast people to hop on a plane next week and come out here Monday through Thursday, and to call the boss if he needed confirmation, the boss said that he has full confidence in my judgment and understanding of the costs involved and that if I think it's necessary, I should order it done without needing confirmation.
Erk.
Still, today we made fantastic progress. I got enough of a design out of these goofballs that I can start getting something concrete down on paper -- a side thing, but one that did need to be specified. I also got a lot more information on the parts that aren't specified yet. Lastly, I directed one of them to stop designing a particular set of functionality to concentrate on documenting something else.
(...honestly, after a night's sleep, it was also much easier to understand the document they sent to us on Monday...)