When I joined Just After Midnight, I had no idea what Incident Management was but I was ready for a change, and the chance to try something new really appealed to me. If I’m being extra honest, I really enjoyed the shift-style schedule of the role at the time as well – I definitely didn’t realise then how much that decision would end up shaping my career!
I remember our team being so small, there were maybe five of us at the time, with a handful of clients to focus all our attention on. There was so much to learn, and managing an incident bridge call for the first time was definitely an experience.
It was intimidating being on a high-intensity call with client stakeholders while I was still finding my feet, but the senior JAM team made sure I was really well supported through it. Everyone was patient, happy to answer questions and gave me the space to learn on the job.
That willingness to let people learn has been a big part of my time at JAM, especially because my role has changed so much over the years. I started in incident management, moved into assisting with and then managing service delivery, then into account management, and now I’m moving into a more operational role working with our team of incident managers (and what a treat it is to have a TEAM now).
Moving between those different areas meant I got exposure to parts of the business I probably wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Client management in particular was a big learning curve for me. One of the hardest things to get right was balancing what a client needs with what we can realistically deliver, and learning how important it is to manage expectations and have those conversations early.
Along with that experience, JAM supported me in gaining project management and ITIL certifications, both of which have been really useful throughout my career here. Over time, all of those different skills started to come together, particularly on some of the more complex client work we were taking on.
One of my favourite recent experiences is a client who came to us with a highly complex technical platform and a number of critical dependencies, where service disruption could have a tangible impact on people’s day-to-day lives.
The initial onboarding was a significant undertaking, there was a huge amount of internal documentation to work through and a complex environment for our team to understand, so getting to the point where we could support it confidently took time. Happily, the client team were incredibly collaborative throughout, and together we built a model where JAM now operates as an integral part of their wider technical function, with plans to expand that support even further.
What I’m most proud of is how far that relationship has come and the level of trust we’ve developed. For me, that collaborative approach is a big part of what good client relationships look like, and it’s something that takes time to build.
The same is true internally. Some of the experiences that have stayed with me over the years are of the team coming together when things have gone wrong.
Once there was a large-scale third-party outage on a weekend that affected a number of our clients at the same time. I was the only incident manager on shift when it happened, and realized that I was about to be buried QUICKLY so I sounded the SOS, and multiple people who weren’t working that day came online to help with triage and communications.
It was stressful, but having everyone rally around the situation made it so much more manageable. I was incredibly appreciative of the team that day, and it’s still one of the strongest examples I have of the culture at JAM.
Inevitably over my 8 (!) years here, a lot has changed – the scale and complexity of the clients we support has grown massively, and the incident management team has had to become very good at context switching and managing a much higher volume of cases.
Happily, what hasn’t changed is the way people treat each other – JAM has always been a kind, supportive place to work, and that has probably been the biggest constant throughout my time here.
One thing I’ve particularly appreciated is the approach when things go wrong. I’ve made mistakes over the years, and the response has consistently been to understand the issue and solve the immediate problem first, then look at accountability and what we can learn from it afterwards, and never focus on assigning blame.
That has been incredibly valuable for my own development, having the space to make mistakes, learn from them and be supported through that process gave me the confidence to keep taking on things that were new to me, even when I didn’t necessarily feel completely ready for them.
It also makes where I am now feel quite full circle, because I started as an incident manager being supported by people who had much more experience than I did, and now I’m moving into a role where I get to support the incident management team myself.
That’s probably the thing I’m most excited about in this next chapter. Hopefully I can help create the same kind of experience for the next generation of incident managers and keep that cycle going.
If I had to give one piece of advice to someone building a career at JAM, it would be to say yes to opportunities, even when they’re a little outside your comfort zone.
Most things are worth trying at least once. You either learn something new, or you learn that particular thing definitely wasn’t for you!
