During my career, I found it useful to maintain an annual job diary in order to keep track of what I had done during the course of that year. I often forgot what I had done, which might had caused me to come across as a weaker performer than I actually was, during the annual performance reviews.
Below I have copied an example of a job diary for an organization that uses the "Management by Objective" method of conducting performance reviews and the IT work is done in accordance with the Agile Manifesto.
Goal 1: Barring
legitimate exceptions, achieve 100% on-time delivery of all organizational
milestones, mandatory training as well as following policies (travel, expense
reporting, accurate time tracking, etc.by dd/mm/yyyy
o
Completed
the following Mandatory courses by 01/08/yyyy:
- Code
of Conduct Training
- Cyber
Security Training
- Safety
Training
o
Completed
the following Mandatory GM courses on 01/09/yyyy:
- Export
Compliance
GOAL 2: Align to Development
Methodology
o
Attended
daily Scrum Stand-up as well as other Scrum ceremonies (Backlog Grooming,
Retrospective, etc.) for ABC Products
o
Attended
daily Scrum Stand-up as well as other Scrum ceremonies (Backlog Grooming,
Retrospective, etc.) for XYZ Product
o
Updated
the tasks in ADO/Jira/Jira Align.
o
Added
new Backlog items to XYZ Backlog.
GOAL 3:
Development Execution
·
Delivered the following Stories for ABC and XYZ
products
|
ID |
Title |
|
446515 |
The
workflow status poll is changed to a request-when-needed completed |
|
447382 |
<Technical>
Optimize XYZ Queries with Indexes on XYZ database. |
|
466907 |
Design Ingestion architecture for Quantum
Active Charts |
|
470133 |
Conduct
Knoledge Transfer for UVW product |
GOAL 4:
Operational Agility (DevOps)
·
Worked on the resolution of the defect ticket
ABC123.
·
Received
ADO/GitHub/Jenkins - Build Engineer Training on 08/16/yyyy.
·
Watched
the video recording of ABC product presentation on 09/03/yyyy.
·
Resolved on the following Bugs
|
ID |
Title |
|
435561 |
Summary
reports sometimes show graphs in the incorrect chart mode |
|
435150 |
Get
status for WF-12345 workflows generates NPE |
|
443681 |
GC
Creation Step Manipulation - REQUEST <-> Action |
|
438684 |
Intermittent
enum list disappearing during UI editing |
GOAL 5: Software
Craftmanship
·
Executed 56 of the total 80 test
cases for XYZ Release 3.5.1 - 9/yyyy.
·
Worked on resolving security scanning issues
that were marked Critical an High in XYZ Core.
·
Participated in Code Reviews as part of the
development process.
·
Worked on using JanusGraph database for loading high-throughput
data.
·
Installed and configured AresDB - the docker
image is called aresdb - on qwerty.man.mydomain.com
host and documented the setup in the Wiki.
·
Wrote a Jupyter simulation in “R” to estimate
the effort of rewriting Z-Tools under various scenario and shared the results
with the development team.
Individual Development Plan Goals:
Goal 1: AI/ML Training
·
Attended
the NVIDIA developer days from 08/02/yyyy & 08/03/yyyy.
·
Completed
the Web-based training course Cloud Native Java Core on 09/27/yyyy.
·
Completed
the Web-based training course Data Classification and Machine Learning on
07/31/yyyy.
·
Completed
the Web-based training course Developing AI and ML Solutions with Java: AI
Fundamentals on 07/24/yyyy.
·
Completed
the Web-based training course Introduction to Artificial Intelligence on 07/23/yyyy.
Goal 2: Develop New
IT Skills
Spring MVC Framework Training
o
Completed
the Web-based training course Java Spring: Spring Application Basics on 02/01/yyyy.
o
Completed
the Web-based training course Java Spring: Creating Web Applications Using
Spring MVC on 02/08/yyyy
o
Completed
the Web-based training course Java Spring: Adding Security Using the Spring
Security Project on 02/13/yyyy.
o
Completed
the Web-based training course Java Spring: Working with Data in Spring on
02/25/yyyy.
o
Completed
the Web-based training course Java Spring: Annotation Configuration and Java
Configuration in Spring on 03/12/yyyy.
o
Completed
the Web-based training course Java Spring: Aspect-Oriented Programming Using
Spring AOP on 03/18/yyyy.
Things I have done outside of my Goals
o
Submitted
Intellectual Property item IP-123 to the Intellectual Property Office on 11/14/yyyy.
o
Submitted
Intellectual Property item IP-456 to the Intellectual Property Office on 18/09/yyyy.
o
Presented
the talk: “Material Sustainability Index” 08/09/yyyy.
o
Attended
Town Halls by my leadership structure as they were announced.
Things “above and beyond” the
average bear
None during this period.
Sacrifices I have made / am making
for GM
None during this period.
The way I used this job diary was to have it printed and ready to discuss with my manager during performance review and also to attach it to such online Employee Management systems as Workday.
I have also copied an example of a job diary for an organization that does not uses the "Management by Objective" method of conducting performance reviews. This job diary has a simpler structure and is more suitable for consumption by an individual performer's manager than a machine - say Workday.
·
Context
for what you did / are doing
o
My major billable activity has been with the BBB Accounts in developing and supporting – within an Agile DevOps paradigm – 2
be-spoke business applications
o
I also led and implemented the changes in these
applications, the virtual servers (Windows Servers and Database Servers), and
the email configurations to support the separation of IT environments over
several months.
o
I volunteered & developed very quickly a
Windows .Net client application to read a PLC log file on a network folder and
parse the content and display that content in a usable format. This was called Diagnostic Tool and was
billable.
·
Enough
detail for your manager to understand the complexity, risk, impact, etc.
o
ABD and CVB are 2 Web applications written on
Microsoft .Net stack but each uses a different architecture – ABD is using
Silverlight for presentation layer while CVB uses standard
HTML/JavaScript. ABD suffers from the
fact that MS Silverlight is no longer an active technology and has been made
obsolete.
o
My tasks have been to add new features to ABD
(new reports and UI features) as well as Change Request (CR) functionality to CVB
for this review period; which required integration between ABD and CVB – even
though these applications were not initially conceived of as being part of the
same semantic domain; interoperability has to be retrofitted into both of them. I completed this task of CR functionality and
their integration on MM/DD/YYYY when we went into production with all these
changes.
o
I also helped the Account staff in (Poland,
Costa Rica, US, Mexico, Lithuania) with trouble-shooting of home-grown MS Excel
tools as the business process changed.
o
I completed the initial iteration of the “Invoice
on Line” (IoL) application working with the Product Owner. More on this below.
·
Things
you do that are ‘above and beyond’ the average bear
o
The location of the resource who had been hired
to develop the IoL application was flooded and remained so for many weeks. I decided, on my own initiative, to initiate
the development since I did not have a lot on my plate. My intent was to develop enough of the
application framework and environment to hand-off a stable starting point when
waters had receded, and the site came online.
This I proceeded to accomplish; however, by the time we were ready for
hand-off, the entire project was cancelled since another group was selected to
develop IoL.
o
In order to meet an informal milestone
(presentation to DDD customer) for Diagnostic Tool set for December 24th,
I worked during the preceding weekend to imitate the development of this tool.
o
Participated in reviews of Intellectual Property
Disclosure on quarterly as well as Ad-Hoc basis – including attending quarterly
reviews.
o
Worked with R&D Seminar staff and vendors to
present relevant and timely educational seminars on topics such as PowerShell,
AngularJS 2.0, Python under the Software Engineering Profession Group.
o
I interviewed contractors during February,
August, September.
o
I joined others and reviewed the performance
issues of SSS and recommended options for improving its performance.
o
U.S. patent no. 123 was granted on dd/mm/yyyy.
·
Things
you do to advance your skills
o
Worked on developing skills in MS SQL Server
Analysis Services by creating prototype project on invoice data.
o
Worked on developing skills in MS Azure by
attending online seminars.
o
Worked on developing skills in Windows
PowerShell by attending R&D Seminars and reading MSDN Magazine articles.
o
Worked on developing understanding of broad
spectrum of technologies relevant to BI by reviewing IP submissions.
o
Reading MSDN magazine, Embedded Programming
Magazine, etc. to keep up with technologies and changes they bring.
o
Attended introductory training in GE PREDIX (IoT
analytics platform built on Amazon Web Services) - four days, 4-hour sessions.
·
Things
you do outside of your project
o
I mentor others through Mentoring or in an
Ad-Hoc manner.
o
I post topics that I think could be of interest
to a wider audience on Yammer. From time
to time, I receive positive feedback that someone else has found that item of
interest.
o
I submitted Intellectual Property disclosure on
the topic of TTT.
o
Attended Town Halls – time permitting
o
Helped with interviewing of contractors.
o
Helped with pre-sales activities as needed.
o
Posted a solution brief on Yammer (as well as
sharing with other team members through email) on business development ideas
around PREDIX, Industry Frameworks in order to begin a conversation around
developing IIoT analytics offerings
o
Worked with John Doe, Sally Business to help
develop the SOW for the XYZ assessment.
o
Attended the Data Management Technical Council
o
Participated in reviews of Intellectual Property
Disclosure on quarterly as well as Ad-Hoc basis – including attending quarterly
reviews.
o
Worked with R&D Seminar staff and vendors to
present relevant and timely educational seminars on topics such as PowerShell,
AngularJS 2.0, etc. under the Software Engineering Profession Group.
o
I participated in the Recognition system by sending
recognitions or responding to recognition requests from others.
o
I Participated with members of the ABC Account
in how to respond to the XYZ Business challenge and documented my own ideas and
shared with the team.
o
Saw a request for assistance on Yammer and
shared a Word Pre-Engagement Questionnaire for Exchange 2013 with others so
that they won't start to build it from scratch.
o
Met, over several meetings, with the inventors
of the VVV startup – new breed of search engine for data analytics - to help
them elucidate their invention in a form suitable for patent submission to
USPTO.
·
Sacrifices
you have / are making for the Company
o
From time to time I worked during the weekend or
late at night to support Separation activities in order to minimize service
disruption to users’ community.
o
Worked on the weekend to get Diagnostic Tool in
front of the customer and help demonstrate that we are capable of solving their problems.
These job diaries are useful by, first of all, establishing and defining your contributions during the entire year and also by supplying your managers with the justification to obtain any monetary rewards or perks that are available.
I had the habit of updating them twice a month at least just so that I will not forget anything.
I also used them in looking for new internal position in order to establish my accomplishments.
In sum, it is very hard to argue against documented activities that could all be traced back and validated.
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