DIY (Self-teaching)

I really like people who reply to a question to which they don’t know the answer ‘That is a question to which I don’t know the answer.’ Well, not exactly like that, but you get the idea. What I really like is if they complete the sentence with, ‘…but I’m going to find out for you, as I’d also like to know.’

In general, this boils down to curiosity and motivation (and has quite a lot to do with having the time to do it).  Tobias Van Schneider, in his blog, has some pretty good insight as to why you should bother learning things yourself:

Everything starts with curiosity and YOUR first step. Just listen to your instincts. My instinct told me that I should take the devices apart, look how they work, and then put it back together — No one told me that. When you force yourself to this kind of process, everything else happens on your way.

If you don’t know the answer, find it out. If you don’t know how to do it, learn to do it. It can only help you. And you’ll learn some pretty interesting stuff along the way too. My current ‘don’t know how to do it, so learning how to do it’ list is more complex SQL queries, very basic Javascript (thanks to Code Academy), oh and the nooks and crannies of Swiss German.  Watch this space.

Taking superman out of the equation (The Super-User System)

Its my mission to learn more and be conscious about what I’m doing and working with each day. This is just how I like to work. What I realise often working with developers whose knowledge is technological compared to my business knowledge, is that I’m often not aware of what is available out there, and therefore what results I can expect on system projects.

I can’t just sit there and wonder, so I was looking yesterday into possible reasons why I was told certain business requirements I presented were not possible, and got from this article from Simple Talk to this case study video about Volvo and the reporting services technology Volvo uses to build their reports.

I took this thought away with me: ‘Systems should not be built for super-users.’ And I got a whole new bunch of ideas for business requirements writing, and manual writing.