Setting your own objectives actually turns out to be a very good thing. I was concerned that, like Tom, it wouldn't be possible to come up with some interesting objectives that the boss men would approve. However, I seem to have worked it out ok. Now its not been officially approved by anyone higher than Steve but it should be, and this would be a good thing.
Basically, my problems (excluding office space) revolve around being stuck doing billing support and not getting to do interesting development. I managed to solve both these things with a little studying of Steve's objectives and the company objectives. Then I thought up what I wanted to do, and then I explained to Steve how my doing these things would solve his and company objectives.
So, I explained that I didn't want to do billing support because Transact SQL support is not my strong point, and he agreed.
I then said I wanted to look into the feasibility of mobile development for the intranet (making the Address List accessible from a mobile for example) and he agreed that this was a good idea, and also fitted into strategic goals of being a forward-thinking organisation.
I then said I'd conduct a review of all our currently used applications within the business. This gets me out talking to the business (which strangely, I really enjoy) and also will hopefully lead to some more interesting development as people explain what it is they want, and I explain how we can help them.
I also agreed to look into developing greater reporting from MARTHA (our senior management reporting tool) which will allow me to work with SVG and XML and .Net - stuff I'd really like to get to know better.
I even agreed to write a document about team processes, simply because it allows me to document the standards our development team should follow. Standards are a good thing (tm) and making sure we all work to the same ones is something that will help get me excited about having a "team" and all that other good stuff.
In fact, the only one that was rejected was my idea to rewrite our intranet from the ground up in .Net (we use MSCMS 2001 at the moment - we really should upgrade) with a new design following the UMA Principles (I'll link when I've written the damn thing ;). This was rejected because of the expense (1/2 a mill or so) for something that added value is hard to quantify. I can sort of understand this, but I still think its a shame. We'll see.
So overall, I'm pretty impressed by the way this is working so far. Of course, its possible that Steve's boss won't approve them, and I'll get handed down some other bs objectives. Until that happens, and I really get the impression that it won't, then I think this is a great idea, that at the moment at least actually seems to be working.
Oh, and there is even a rumour that we might be able to get better office space soon.
