One facet of my job is to support an LMS.  I recently had occasion to enter the 200th trouble ticket and since it felt like a milestone I browsed through some of the previous tickets.

  • How I have Grown

I have changed because of working with this company.  For the worse: I may have asked some folks to do too much based on our friendship.  I thought if I just-tried-harder I could impact software/integration development – way wrong.  For the better:  I have a more compassionate understanding of user error – due to my numerous errors.  I have acquired a pattern of troubleshooting which I did not possess before this endeavor.  I have learned to under-promise and strive to over-deliver.

  • Expectations Shifted

Working with a smaller LMS there was not much documentation with which to begin.  I notice the first questions I would ask via a trouble ticket were procedural, now I am personally asking bigger “What If” questions.  We are already paying for the product, we are already invested and as such the optimism of the vendor dwindles into an examination of the limitations of a product and an emphasis on feature requests (future revenues) versus the unbridled enthusiasm of a sales person.  I now find myself passing on my newly found expectations to the end users, asking them to work within the current confines of the program, but express their wishes for the future, but I try not to promise anything.  I have learn the bifurcated nature of this vendor relationship thingy.

  •  Telling Doesn’t Work, Showing Does

Just because I am now working with grown ups doesn’t mean I should toss everything our the window I know from teaching kids!  Until a teacher watches me DO something in the LMS it doesn’t exist.  I know DUH, but I lived this one especially in the first two years and now *so* own this idea.