It is an interesting time of year. I expect our year is much the same as any other firm’s – January starts with good intentions and New Year’s resolutions, but by mid-January the weather and general lack of anything to look forward to has taken its toll, while the IT team, along with the rest of the firm, is working at an all-time low.
Why then – against this backdrop – does everyone decide to conduct their appraisal process at this time? In an attempt to lift the general mood of deep depression, I decided in my wisdom to conduct two ‘fun’ events. The first was a review of the fantasy budget by the team. Fantasy is probably the correct word to use in conjunction with budget in these straitened times – and so the meeting proved, with the IT team approving budget expenditure on more than 30 capital projects and increasing our spending profile by about 3,000%. For the second fun exercise, we decided as a management team that we would appraise each of our servers, grading them on several counts.
