Success for IT Professionals has many meanings. For some its all about titles for some its a small cap award and for some its just their boss mentioning their name in the all hands meeting( they have to see their name on the power point slide)

In my last company we used to joke around..if you are getting any award in the quarterly all hands meeting..chances are you will not be in the company the following quarter.

After several years of experimenting I have to come to realize that at the end of the day all that matters is “Are You On The Winning Team”

By winning team I mean are you on the project that successfully got deployed got tremendous visibility and it directly contributed to your boss’s success.

In my last IT role I experimented with a cool concept. I volunteered to be on every project that IT Applications team signed up to deliver. Usually in those days most of my colleagues had either 50% allocation( limited to work on two projects) or 100% ( only to one project). My strategy was even if I contribute 1% to any project’s success, my name will appear on the scene and I will be rewarded.

For many projects, as a token of appreciation I ended up getting $20 American Gift Cards from my Boss.

So my message to you..don’t get caught up with the notion that you have no bandwidth to work across multiple projects. The chances are you are working 60hrs a week anyway with your current projects. Sign up for more and you will be rewarded for things that you hardly put anytime or emotions into.

Don’t put all the eggs in one basket.

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