My Yellow Brick Road to Project Management
Before joining the Apprenticeship I was an Explorer Leader, which is the next age group after Scouts and currently has 18, 14-18 year olds. This allowed me to gain lots of different skills and experiences ensuring they got the most out of the sessions. This also made sure that I was able to deal with lots of different situations and from gaining these skills made me realise that I wanted to go into Project Management for a career.
I have recently celebrated my second anniversary at Cisco; it only feels like I started yesterday! I joined Cisco as an Apprentice as I didn’t want to get into Thousands of Pounds worth of debt, wanted a new change of scene and a new group of people to learn from.
After my first year in the apprenticeship and being lucky enough to get a taste of lots of areas of the business I was giving the responsibility to be the Project Manager for bringing in the next intake of Apprentices. This was a very full on project and was great to have the wide exposure across the business. I spent time working with our partner QA, who looked after the recruitment. My main responsibilities were looking after the Open Days and the Assessment Day which was followed by a wash-up session which had Pastries – nom!
Throughout this project I gained project management skills and contacts throughout the business. I worked with partners, people in different areas of the business and also dealt with my first ever conflict management due to a misunderstanding.
Afterwards I moved into Supply Chain Delivery (SSCD) and was lucky enough to be invited to the FY15 All Hands in Lisbon with the team! This was a great opportunity which allowed me to meet the team face-to-face, gain an understanding of the year’s objectives and also learn more about the team’s culture, which may or may not have involved stylishly consuming a lot of beer, Super Bock, to be precise!
On the All Hands we also had an offsite to the beach and spent the afternoon playing beach ‘Olympics’ with the Lisbon Office. This was a brilliant afternoon; water balloon volleyball, beach football, enjoying the sun, drinks, eating tapas and having fun ‘til late!
After all the fun of Lisbon, I spent the rest of my placement looking into SSCDs KPI’s with Convergys, who look after our Requests for Materials. The idea of this project was to look at how the data is collected, reported and presented to improve the data’s presentation. Alongside this I produced how-to guides which would be given to new staff, giving Cisco the opportunity to do spot checks that they are getting the same results as Convergys. Time management was the biggest thing I learnt from this rotation because I was juggling multiple projects at the same time!
I have now moved into Global Technical Assistance Center and am working on a global project, ‘EPiC’, and yes it’s an epic Project! It is about making the support we offer to our customers more proactive than our current reactive model. We have three models which we are testing and these are the Support Model, Beyond the Fix and Fast Start. These three models allow us to design and test, giving proactive support to our customers in different ways. Throughout EPiC I have been able to gain massive exposure across the business, as I have been lucky enough to work with people based within all of the Cisco Theatres in a true TAC tradition.
I have really enjoyed my time throughout the last 2 years at Cisco, have learnt a lot of new skills and met lots of people. I have found something that I really enjoy and am looking forward to completing my last year of the apprenticeship and transitioning to a project management role in Technical Services. This means I can start the countdown to the day I take the training wheels off and become a fully qualified Project Management (a ‘real’ person)!
