Blog Post

Work Smarter Not Harder - Technical Artillery 

Dujon Walsham • Feb 21, 2019

The Preparation to take on Requirements

What is Technical Artillery
Very same as having enough ammunition in a firearm of choice.
In this case the firearm is of course the skill sets and the ammunition will be the attributes within them that we have.

So if we look at some of the skill sets which we have, especially in my space where I specialize in the System Centre space so let's take two of them being SCCM and SCOM.

So both of them would be the skill sets which are the technical weapons so for the actual artillery it would be what we can do with them.

Both technologies are very big and different from each other, so our knowledgeable artillery is quite important as the more varied we are with it then the more you can accomplish with those skill sets.

Plan of Attack
Projects can sometimes be the same or can have a very completely different custom/bespoke requirement.

They may all utilize the exact same technologies, but the requirements that could make them a lot more complex, your artillery being what you can actually do with them will make all the difference.

Everybody has come across requirements in which our specialized areas are not able to fulfilled them by default, but that doesn't necessarily mean they cannot be done....at least this is how my approach is.

So our plan of attack is to analyse what we can do and capable of inputting with our current skill sets as well as understanding what has to be done to complete a solution. These can give us opportunities to strengthen our attributes and acquire new skills in the process which can only make our artillery a lot stronger.

A very important attribute that we need to understand is that it's not what you know (not just about) but it's how you go about it.
As much pressure as there is on us as there is to know everything it's simply not possible, we have our respective areas and we should be always striving to gain more knowledge within them but we simply cannot know everything in anything.

A question which has normally been asked in an interview is "How would go about tackling this solution" or "How would you implement this technology that you haven't seen before", there is no correct answer in this scenario but there is certainly an incorrect answer or approach of trying to bluff or wing your way through it. This question is asked because they want to hear how you would handle the task at hand, your planning skills etc initiative is what they expect to see.
You will never always be handed a task which you know how to do on the fly because not every requirement is as simple as that

Ammo Repository
Custom work we have done before is always nice to hold onto especially if you face tasks which face similarities.

Where I stand on this is though I have a repository of various developments I never like to use them. I may look for a refresh but I would never use the exact same development.

My reason being is more creativity related as I like to re-create something fresh, something which the solution fits the business requirement rather than the business requirement fitting the solution.

Sometimes developments we carry may not necessarily fulfill the exact requirement, I tend to create things which have more of a scalable template structure where they can be customized for however I want it to be done.

Course the scenario which I've described might not always be applicable in my skill set has some things will be perfect fitting exactly but still does serve a purpose to have something more fresher.







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