By the time I got two paragraphs into the "Crucibles of Leadership" article, I had already started planning my blog entry. All I had to do was pull some of these crucible moments from my own life, fill up a decent sized page with brilliant and witty commentary and I'd be done until next month. Unfortunately it's not so easy to pull these moments from my past. Either they're few and far between or I need to spend some time reflecting on how I got to where I am. I'm going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and assume its the latter. In the six-and-a-half minutes I just spent thinking about my own crucibles, I came up with two--one of which I'm going to keep in my back pocket in the event that I need a quick go-to in the near future.
When I accepted my position in Oil and Gas, we were in very early discussions to develop a database replacement for ERIS. We'd just come out of the CGI database project cancellation, but we still needed new software to track oil and gas wells. Someone, I don't really remember who, had made some initial contacts with the Groundwater Protection Council (GWPC) regarding their software, RBDMS. This database solution is currently in use in 23ish oil and gas producing states, and they were very interested in having WV become their 24th state. The best part was that they were willing to give it to us for free. It was an opportunity to good to pass up, and since I have a little database-type experience and all the time in the world by virtue of my brand new position, I took lead on the project to customize RBDMS for our needs.
I started off in a good spot, the functional requirements had already been created for the CGI project. All I had to do was steer the ship, or that's what I thought. I learned very quickly that in order to succeed and provide a suitable ERIS replacement, I had to work with every person in OOG to ensure that all of our needs were being met. In some cases, the requirements document was fine, but that was the exception rather than the rule. In the ensuing months, I learned how every person in our office uses data and then got them involved in testing to make sure that the final product, once delivered, not only met the minimum "functional requirements," but did so in such a way to enable each of us to do our jobs better.
Today, as I type this, we are awaiting final deployment of RBDMS. I've set the date for July 1, and I'm not really all that nervous about it. Even if there are problems, and we know there will be, I feel like the staff knows what we all put into the process and they trust that the outcome will be positive. The endless discussions, planning sessions, data clean-up efforts and other tedious tasks we all lived through will pay dividends as we move into the future of oil and gas data management.
2 comments:
Loved it, Jason. What a great example of a "crucible of leadership," being thrust into the flames of the concept of a new database, and emerging on the other side with a pretty great system, a bunch of people who have bought into it, and Jason the Awesomer Leader.
Sounds like a great project to learn a lot about OOG as well as demonstrate support and understanding for the group!
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