{"id":35,"date":"2015-06-06T13:28:54","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T16:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/va1der.ca\/?p=35"},"modified":"2015-08-28T21:31:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T00:31:47","slug":"eureka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/va1der.ca\/index.php\/2015\/06\/06\/eureka\/","title":{"rendered":"Eureka Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been a little unhappy with\u00a0the progress I’ve made to date towards getting my ham shack\u00a0operational.\u00a0 It’s not the lack<\/em> of progress per se, which is to be expected given circumstances, but the haphazard nature of it.\u00a0 Things are happening in fits and starts and I have multiple things on the go at once.\u00a0 Maybe that too is only to be expected, considering I’m trying to shoehorn this hobby into an existing life.\u00a0 But I’ve been\u00a0thinking I could benefit from some added focus so as to avoid spinning my wheels.<\/p>\n

As I was coming to this conclusion, my train of thought first said, ok, if you want to organize your efforts then set some goals.\u00a0 Great idea.\u00a0 And as I happily daydreamed for a few moments on the candidate list of potential goals, I realized that too was beginning to be pretty haphazard.<\/p>\n

So, working backwards from that, as I was pondering how better to channel my goals, the clue train finally arrived in a classic eureka, “I could have had a V8”, moment.\u00a0 I used to do project management for a living.\u00a0 I managed projects for many many other<\/em> people (slash organizations slash corporations).\u00a0 So if I have so much experience with\u00a0project management, why not do it for myself?\u00a0 Ding!\u00a0\u00a0 So, yes, the light bulbs are finally going off.\u00a0 The scales fell from my eyes and I realized that hobby or not, I can do this as a formally managed project for… me.\u00a0 I can treat this according to project management best practices.\u00a0 I mean, I’ve had experience taking major projects all the way from marketing to deployment.\u00a0 I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but this really should be my own properly<\/span> managed project.<\/p>\n

Now if I was doing this for a client, the first thing I’d do is\u00a0sit them down and\u00a0say\u00a0let’s come up with a mission statement.\u00a0 I’d tell them we needed to boil down all the drivers for what they want to accomplish into a single, concise statement so that we don’t end up (doing exactly what I started doing which is) going off in ten directions at once.\u00a0 So here I am, the project manager, sitting down with myself, the project sponsor saying, self, let’s boil down all the driving factors that pulled you into amateur radio.\u00a0 What do you want to accomplish?\u00a0 It took me some time, but\u00a0here is what I’ve come up with:<\/p>\n

My Project\u00a0Mission Statement<\/h2>\n

Explore the science and<\/em> technology of radio and communications with special regard to those technologies offering the widest range and scope of communications with the lowest requirement for intermediate infrustructure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know it’s a little broad, and it reads more like the vision statement for a non-profit organization, but you know, I think this is ok.\u00a0 This is, after all, going to be an ongoing effort, not an open-and-shut one-shot project.\u00a0 It has to be a little broad.\u00a0 I’m going to break it down and see if it does what I need to do, which is channel my efforts and help define the goals.<\/p>\n