Comments on Thoughtful Programmer: College new-hires and the zen of BPM

I was going to tell the college-hires my war stori...

2009-04-30T06:59:00.000-05:00

I was going to tell the college-hires my war stories from the Student Loan industry - I figured they'd relate to the process of applying for Student Loans... But then I realized they'd recoil in horror when they realized we'd improved the process of tracking them down to make them pay the money back :-)

Depending on where they went to school, talk to th...

2009-04-30T00:31:00.000-05:00

Depending on where they went to school, talk to them about course registration. At some schools this is still manual, with people standing in line to get into classes. or it may be automated, but badly so (back in the dark ages when i was in college, it was on a mainframe but you were only allowed to register between 8 and 10pm and 6am and 9am because those were the "mainframe windows" the course registration program was allowed!! seemed silly when we could have run the whole thing on a small pc or mac.

And if it isn't the course registration itself - perhaps the procedures around getting course advice from counselors or students, or the add/change/drop process... and how about applying for financial aid :)

In my experience, educational institutions have a lot of under-invested processes that are handled by rote or manually - its a good place to start, because it is one set of processes that they'll have all too much experience with.

Scott

Hi, John! Having spent the last six months hangin...

2009-04-29T16:38:00.000-05:00

Hi, John!

Having spent the last six months hanging around with Masters students who are 20+ years younger than I am, I can tell you, your new hires will not be able to relate. And really, how could they? As you say, the "relating" part is built on experience they don't have yet. Yes, you will sound like an old guy droning on, just accept that part. You should have heard me trying to explain overlays to someone recently!

These "kids" in my program are smart, too, they're freakin' brilliant. But as soon as you move from theory into reality, they collapse into a steaming pile of idealism. The thing they have going for them is they realize it. One told me just the other day, after I had recounted one of my war stories from "the real world," that he understood what I was saying but knew it would be 10 years before he really got it. I just liked that he got that it was something to get.

Just convince them that there's something there to get. You don't need to convert them today, just open their eyes. Maybe you can tell some war stories of the kinds of problems that happen when BPM isn't there to solve them for you. Your passion is what will make them pay attention even if they don't really get it.

-king