How Will You Apply This Experience in Your Next Job?

Today marks the end of my brief run as Chief Technology Officer at Granite State College. On my way out, a respected colleague asked me, "How will you apply the experience you gained in your next job?" The question is an excellent one to which I didn't have a good, immediate answer. And because it's an excellent question I continued to ponder it throughout my last day.

Logically deconstructing the question, I see the first component as, "What experience did you gain?"

• Cross-functional project management can be a full-time job. Unless the focus is on developing one's own staff, assigning one person to tackle this kind of project management in tandem with operations management is risky for the organization.
• People can make work harder than it has to be. Something that only involves a few hours of technical work can end up taking several days, due to barriers that other people erect for myriad reasons. And because those barriers are erected by people, removing those barriers becomes extremely time-consuming and exhausting.
• When working with Salesforce, iterate frequently and demonstrate progress continuously. Adding new functionality to Salesforce is easy, and as a result it's easier and more productive to release features rapidly in small batches. In short, an agile approach to feature delivery would be best in Salesforce.