Johnson & Johnson

Becoming a better researcher

By Erika  |  2009/06/28 20:56 Posted in Johnson & Johnson  |  Comments (0)

I spent most of the week conducting research on various projects. I was able to use the research skills I learned from my Rutgers courses to search for key information.. Akin to writing a paper for Rutgers, I had to research my topic, but in this case, I couldn’t “change my topic” if I didn’t find the right information. An important aspect of doing research when information is unavailable is being able to find information that will lead someone in the right direction (on a project). For example, even though I wasn’t able to find specific answers to key research questions for particular topics, I was able to pinpoint information that will give J&J insight into business issues.

On Wednesday the air conditioning unit on my floor stopped working. On Thursday the air conditioning unit still was not fixed, and because I was still conducting research for various projects, Mark let me take my work home because of the heat. While it might seem like a minuscule feature of completing my work, I was ecstatic that I was trusted to finish my work at home.

I noticed that taking work on the road and completing work at home is a trend among people at J&J (and probably many other organizations as well). I like the idea of being able to complete work at another location when unexpected things occur like air conditioners breaking, but I also wonder about the implications of taking work off-site to complete elsewhere. How will this blurring of work and home life change the way we think about and compartmentalize life in our mind? (For example, how will we make distinctions between work tasks and home tasks? How will tasks be restructured to accommodate project deadlines around home life? What tasks will be given presidence and which ones will be forgotten?)

In the long run, the balance between work and home life will be a big issue, personally as I search for a career, and as I grapple with new technologies that bring me closer to my work and farther from other aspects of my life.

Understanding data

By Erika  |  2009/06/22 01:33 Posted in Johnson & Johnson  |  Comments (2)

In addition to my continuous work on the second medical site, I called Sam and discussed alternative ways to display the data he collects. It is important that I understand the intricacies of the data his department collects in order to discuss ways to improve the website. Sometimes I get carried away and focus mainly on the technical side of completing a project, when I really need to understand the reasons behind what I am doing and the content that I’m working with. Because the director hadn’t visited the site in a few weeks he forgot how one of the KPIs is calculated. He asked me for the calculation, which I was able to produce, but I felt I didn’t have the best knowledge of how to explain it to him. I realized that I really have to know the content I’m working with and why it’s important to the client.

For example, on the first medical site, I was having trouble figuring out a way to put a certain calculation that determined whether a milestone was met into SharePoint that required reference to today’s date. I kept trying to think of ways to calculate the current date, and because I wasn’t thinking of ways to manipulate the way the data was calculated, I kept hitting a road block. Mark suggested I change the way the formula calculated the milestone by breaking it up into two separate formulas that make no reference to the current date thus arriving at a solution that was as close as possible to the intended goal.

My goal after talking with Sam and working on the two medical sites this week is to have a more intimate knowledge of the content I’m working with in order to work around technological restrictions and discover alternate, and sometimes more creative ways at arriving at the intended result. Also, by understanding the content more, I’ll be able to better discuss information management with clients.

In the coming week I will wrap up work on the two medical websites.

Second medical site dashboard

By Erika  |  2009/06/15 22:30 Posted in Johnson & Johnson  |  Comments (1)

I started a new project today on a second medical website. This second site is a partner page to the medical website mentioned earlier. My task is to take the Excel sheet and transform the information to KPIs on the SharePoint site. By doing so, users will be able to see various forms of report data condensed down into a dashboard linked to variable, user-submitted data. Using a SharePoint dashboard in this way creates easily updatable indicators that let users quickly manage medical data. Also by creating a dashboard in SharePoint, there won’t be a need for someone to constantly update the data source since it is linked dynamically.