What Gives You Job Satisfaction?
- John Basso
- Nov 26, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 5
Recently, I caught myself telling a client, “I used to get most of my job satisfaction from doing projects, but now, I get most of my job satisfaction from getting projects done.”
After the words came out of my mouth, I realized I have quite a few odd sayings. After I toss one out, I typically observe the person on the other end of the video call looking confused for a minute or so. That is when I know I have somebody engaged in a conversation. So, I decided to spend the next few weeks cataloging these sayings and how they apply.
10 Steps to Conquer Job Complexity
At some point, projects become too big or too complex for one person to work on them independently. Some of this is the natural progression of technology, and some of this is due to your career advancing.
Don’t get me wrong—I love doing work! But no matter how good a ditch digger you are, you will not keep New Orleans from flooding by digging ditches as fast as you can. Large projects require a lot more than simply doing something.
Regardless of my client’s internal process or lack of one, I follow ten simple steps.
Determine the problem you’re solving. This sounds obvious, but in almost 100% of the cases, when I start working on a new project, the actual problem isn’t well understood.
The very first item is to identify stakeholders.
Then, interview each stakeholder to refine the project, ensuring you understand what is important to them and why.
Finally, confirm with all the stakeholders simultaneously.
Write the project down in plain English and distribute it as a safeguard to ensure everyone was paying attention.
Most projects enhance or modify current abilities, so it is crucial to figure out what already exists.
If knowledge about the project needs to be acquired, then acquire it.
Many times, this is due to missing data or metrics. A stress test to determine whether data is missing is to ask the question, “How will I know I have succeeded?”
Create a high-level plan, but don’t write up the details yet.
Write up the project as an Epic and stories.
Stack rank your stories to force a conversation about prioritization.
Start to think about if there are any natural break points where a group of stories could be released to facilitate additional learning or immediate value.
Do the work or, technically, have the team do the work.
Once the work is complete, re-measure to understand your progress. Don’t wait until all the work is done; start measuring as soon as possible.
Determine if any work can be deferred. Many times, it is better to move on to a different project than linger on the current project to extract the last 10% of the value. Typically, the first 70 – 90% of the project will contain the highest value.
Don’t forget to celebrate! [See blog post on Celebrating wins.]
Doing versus Getting It Done
An example of a project I just worked on involved e-commerce fraud. As soon as I got wind of the project, I started doing research on credit card fraud detection systems. I did some more work and scheduled phone calls with possible vendors. I wasn’t following my 10-step process, but I was really getting ahead of this issue, so I was feeling good about all the work I had already done.
During a completely random conversation with a member of management, I started to suspect something was wrong, so I pulled out my 10-step checklist and started with step 1: Confirming what problem I was trying to solve.
It turns out the type of fraud had nothing to do with invalid credit cards. After I completed step 1, I understood what the issue was—it had to do with customers taking advantage of free offers. Finding a better credit card fraud system wouldn’t have made a difference. I almost wasted a whole week doing things, but I caught myself and corrected course.
I try to follow my own advice, but sometimes I even forget. To mitigate forgetting, I try my best to make sure the whole team knows these best practices. This way, everyone can make sure best practices are being followed.