A Day in the Life: Leila
Leila, Change Engineer
“Our success really is all about the team. When everyone is kept in the loop with clear, consistent communications and we engage with client teams closely and directly, good things happen for the project, and work is more fun, too.”
6:00 - I drag myself out of bed to meet a friend at the gym. As much as I love fitting in some exercise before work (it definitely gets my brain going), I hate getting out of bed! Then again, I never have the time or energy to work out at the end of the day.
7:15 – Home from the gym, I frantically get ready for work.
7:45 – Grab something for breakfast (and a quick smooch from my husband) as I run out the door. My morning commute is roughly 45 minutes. The Metro takes about the same amount of time, but I (nerdily) calculated that it actually makes more financial sense to drive. I take some back roads and then crawl all the way to Arlington, switching between my favorite country radio station and NPR.
8:30 – Pop in the Starbucks by the client site and get a venti coffee. That’s life as a caffeine addict.
8:45 – Settle in at my desk, check my calendar, and scan for important email from last night’s code drop. It looks like everything went well. There are no big fires to put out this morning,
9:00 – I join the first of many conference calls on the agenda today. My client’s workforce is distributed all over the US, so most of my interface with team members is over the phone. Our Infinitive team is embedded within the client team as functional support of a high-volume (and high-priority) ordering system. This morning’s call is a review of the system’s week-over-week performance. Good news: through the team’s hard work and effective coordination with IT shows, we hit a year-to-date high rate of order flow-through from the front-end system through the back end. It looks like we’re on track to meet our year-end goal.
10:00 – My client and Infinitive manager stop by on their way to Starbucks to make sure I’m adequately caffeinated. My venti is still half full, so I decline.
10:15 – I incorporate information from the 9:00 a.m. call into a weekly scorecard deck. The scorecard provides a high-level snapshot of the system’s operational performance and is distributed to a large number of stakeholders. The data, gathered from multiple sources, tracks weekly order volumes, flow-through to downstream systems, system bug counts and aging, help desk call volume, and workforce system utilization. I love having responsibility for the scorecard, not just because it gives the team a holistic view of this important project, but also because I have a weird love for PowerPoint.
12:00 – Starving, I round up the team for lunch. We decide on the new pita place, which as the best hummus. It’s a nice day, so we eat outside in the courtyard.
12:30 – Time for another conference call, this one covering the next phase of a rollout for a product just released in the ordering system. As my team’s SME for this product, I need to ensure all dependencies are considered, all proper requirements have been documented, risks mitigated, and updates communicated. The product will be available to several new sales channels next week, so there are a lot of loose ends to tie up before we give it the green light.
2:00 – I receive and load a monthly report of help desk volumes into a spreadsheet that tracks month-over-month changes. A spike in calls from a particular channel last month suggests additional training is needed I send the stats to the training lead and channel contact.
3:00 – I conduct regression testing in the ordering system to double check that the changes in the code drop last night did not hurt the user experience for the product I support. I find a few minor bugs, which I capture in screenshots and log with the error reporting tool.
3:30 – On another call, I talk through upcoming system changes with our help desk contact so he can update the help desk call scripts before the next code drop.
4:00 – Catch up on email and send out meeting requests for next week.
5:00 – The last call of the day is a bi-weekly team call with IT to review new issues and the timing of various fixes. I describe the upcoming product launch to keep everyone in the loop. The call runs a little long, but it’s productive and necessary as we work through a number of outstanding issues.
5:45 –Tonight, we’re having an Infinitive team happy hour at one of the great Arlington restaurants. We all head out together.
6:30 – My husband stops by the happy hour. It’s a treat that he works near my office. We stay a bit longer to make sure we miss the rush hour traffic!
8:00 – Home at last, and just in time to catch a favorite TV show!
