2

I work as an IT consultant at a large company in a open space office. I am the only developer here who is responsible for a product which has a small part in a larger environment. We soon have a release thus it is final testing phase. I have fixed all the reported bugs and my backlog for the next release is either already done on a branch or needs first some input from business which I will only get after the release.

My problem is, I already mentioned to my "line manager" at the customer that I have not enough work. He said he's checking into this, but this can take a few days. So currently I am totally bored and will be for the next few days. But I also know that I am still booked 100% until the end of April and I don't see more than 40% workload until then.

What is the best way coping with a situation like this?

As a side note, I told my employer in the end year talk that I want to change the customer soon after being here for more than 2 years, because diverse customers and project is my main reason to be in consulting and not as a fixed employee at one of our customers. So my motivation in general is currently rather low.

Thomas
  • 29
  • 1
  • 3
    Two words: self improvement. – Oded Feb 09 '16 at 11:58
  • There's no conceivable way I can imagine a good developer getting bored. Here are some possible activities to fill your time with, which at the same time fit your job description: refactoring small pieces of the application's code, reading programming books, automating some development/testing/deployment parts, writing BDD tests, improving the application's documentation, search for possible security holes... I'm running out of space here, but you get the idea... – Radu Murzea Feb 09 '16 at 12:03
  • Oh, and since these are actually all beneficial for the company and the product, you can actually bill the time you spent doing them... – Radu Murzea Feb 09 '16 at 12:04
  • And once you've done all those, experiment with new tech packages that might make the project easier, might make you more valuable as an employee, ... – Fiora the Ferret Feb 09 '16 at 15:43

1 Answers1

4

Spend your "spare" time writing and improving the documentation.

In the short term, it is a useful activity. It is open ended - you can spend as much time as you have on it.

In the long term, your career goal is to be someone who can be put on a project for a short time, and then move on to something else. The best thing you can do for that objective is to establish a reputation for leaving a project in a state in which it is really easy for another developer to pick it up and become productive.

Patricia Shanahan
  • 30,795
  • 8
  • 68
  • 101