More Verbs, Fewer Nouns

I had an epiphany the other afternoon: I think we may be trying to do too much, too quickly.

We (the Tech Team) have plenty going on: updating the Central Office servers and getting them working efficiently (and without fail!); a K-2 iPad refresh; figuring out the easy way of doing inventory and device management; managing a network update/upgrade at our middle school/high school; figuring out the easy way to manage device access to our networks; device and systems prep for state testing; rearranging responsibilities for tech support and managing student information systems; managing eRate (which is new to me); developing a device refresh rationale and plan…

All without letting education or support services suffer hiccups for long, and making sure all the behind-the-curtain tasks get taken care of.

And all while I try to get into classrooms and initiate tech integrator support for all our teachers in all four of our schools (for the first time!).

I started to lay out all our immediate tasks on small Post-It notes and then set them out by week, over the next 7 weeks.

And what I realized quickly was that, although we had done a great job of identifying our top priorities, we were trying to take them on too quickly, and all at once. I easily had 3 weeks’ worth of work (as evidenced by the stack of Post-It notes aligned to each week) for each of next three weeks.

The message to me was that we needed to give ourselves more time to get the work done, so we could do it well and get it done right. It probably also means that we have to put some of that work back a couple weeks.

This was reinforced when Michelle, one of our technicians, came back having visited with a tech director she used to work for, and shared that she had told him about 3 of our major projects (the K-2 iPad Refresh, the Central Office Server work, and the eRate-funded network upgrade at our middle/high school), and his response was that that was a lot to take on for one year! (And we’re working on so much more!)

Ok. I might be slow, but I’m trainable. So in the next day or two, the Tech Team will meet and we’ll not only provide updates on each of our projects, but we’ll map them out on the calendar and see if we can’t creat a more effective timeline.