In my role, I've been tasked with the job of developing a helpdesk/workflow database that allows us to to track items, people, locations, etc. through multiple processes. You may be familiar with tools like Remedy, Cherwell, LANDesk, etc. My job has been to develop this product and release it for our company to replace the old system. I have been working on it for 8 months. I am the only resource on this.
My problem is that every time I try to set up meetings or put out a soft release, someone in the company keeps slapping me down. My meetings get canceled, my most recent soft release has been canceled and I can't seem to convince people to let me run this in production. Everyone makes the right noises when I talk to them, but somehow I get sabotaged whenever I try to run with it. They seem to want a perfect release, despite me telling them that the best way to release is piecemeal, while testing the environment. It doesn't take a software expert to figure this out.
Part of the problem is that I'm currently only employed as a support analyst and I don't have much teeth in my company. I have a boss who is very risk-averse and tends to buckle under whenever any of the directors or higher-ups put pressure on him. He is also not aware of my day-to-day activities and only has a very general understanding of what I do. As a result, I'm not able to face my critics openly, nor will my boss, it seems, stand in my corner and let me do my job.
Furthermore, my work is on hold because we are waiting on hardware upgrades that will take a few weeks. The result is that aside from puttering around in my sandbox environment, I don't have much to do and it's driving me a little crazy.
Recently I've noticed that our office has become a bit of a political hotbed. I don't generally participate in gossip with random coworkers, nor do I tolerate it.. but there are people who seem to be thriving while being very unprofessional in their opinions toward others. This is not the type of work environment I want to be in. I think that part of the problem is that we have just as many managers as employees, and our managers are all very hands-off, to the point where they don't actually know the jobs they are managing intimately. As a result, the workers are expected to be self-directed. This is fine, but there are a lot of people being paid a lot of money unnecessarily.
My problem is, a lot of these people being paid have little else to do than make friends and enemies and entertain themselves with workplace politics. Part of that, it seems, is making my life miserable.
I want to talk to our HR Director tomorrow about giving me a title change, so I can better manage this project. One of the criticisms I've faced is that people aren't confident in my work because I don't formally release things.. Well I'm not formally in charge of anything, so how do they expect me to do a formal release? Besides that, I make $40,000/yr, so I imagine a lot of people aren't comfortable leaving a large chunk of our company's success in my hands.
My current software release has a very low risk of failure and represents a big win in terms of time savings. How do I convince the people who matter to trust me in releasing this? I don't want to go over my boss' head, but at the same time if he is too meek to make my case for me, I don't mind representing myself. How would you go about this without making people upset?
My problem is that every time I try to set up meetings or put out a soft release, someone in the company keeps slapping me down. My meetings get canceled, my most recent soft release has been canceled and I can't seem to convince people to let me run this in production. Everyone makes the right noises when I talk to them, but somehow I get sabotaged whenever I try to run with it. They seem to want a perfect release, despite me telling them that the best way to release is piecemeal, while testing the environment. It doesn't take a software expert to figure this out.
Part of the problem is that I'm currently only employed as a support analyst and I don't have much teeth in my company. I have a boss who is very risk-averse and tends to buckle under whenever any of the directors or higher-ups put pressure on him. He is also not aware of my day-to-day activities and only has a very general understanding of what I do. As a result, I'm not able to face my critics openly, nor will my boss, it seems, stand in my corner and let me do my job.
Furthermore, my work is on hold because we are waiting on hardware upgrades that will take a few weeks. The result is that aside from puttering around in my sandbox environment, I don't have much to do and it's driving me a little crazy.
Recently I've noticed that our office has become a bit of a political hotbed. I don't generally participate in gossip with random coworkers, nor do I tolerate it.. but there are people who seem to be thriving while being very unprofessional in their opinions toward others. This is not the type of work environment I want to be in. I think that part of the problem is that we have just as many managers as employees, and our managers are all very hands-off, to the point where they don't actually know the jobs they are managing intimately. As a result, the workers are expected to be self-directed. This is fine, but there are a lot of people being paid a lot of money unnecessarily.
My problem is, a lot of these people being paid have little else to do than make friends and enemies and entertain themselves with workplace politics. Part of that, it seems, is making my life miserable.
I want to talk to our HR Director tomorrow about giving me a title change, so I can better manage this project. One of the criticisms I've faced is that people aren't confident in my work because I don't formally release things.. Well I'm not formally in charge of anything, so how do they expect me to do a formal release? Besides that, I make $40,000/yr, so I imagine a lot of people aren't comfortable leaving a large chunk of our company's success in my hands.
My current software release has a very low risk of failure and represents a big win in terms of time savings. How do I convince the people who matter to trust me in releasing this? I don't want to go over my boss' head, but at the same time if he is too meek to make my case for me, I don't mind representing myself. How would you go about this without making people upset?