Blog: William McKnight

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Where does time go?

I do about 10 environment assessments of DW/BI environments per year. I appreciate being able to fine tune or overhaul an environment so it is best able to meet its goals, both short- and long-term. People, process and technology are analyzed as a result.

All too often, I find that some of the optimizations are unrelated to client preconceptions about where they may be. One common optimization comes down to simply time management by the team members.

For example, one interview some time ago was supposed to be at 9:00. It started around 11:00. Read on to learn why...

Pete (name changed) was going to leave his house at 8:30 to get to work by our 9:00 meeting. He got off to a late start since he had misplaced something he needed for the day and had to scour the house (only to discover the file was in his bag all along). He also had to do the dishes that morning. He had forgot his wife was leaving early that day.

Then the gas gauge was empty and he found himself in the morning gas line at the pumps. When he got in, the parking lot was full and he had a "15 minute walk" to the office. He began working on the fires on his desk, trying to quickly accomplish some things before our meeting. He spilled his coffee and when he rose to go get paper towels, he noticed he had some voicemail, which reminded him he promised to call someone at 10:00 (after our meeting).

For some reason, this story came to mind today as I thought about the ripple effect of time mis-management and the importance of corralling the non-reusable asset we all have, time.

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