Every year, members of the Technology & Products organization at Salesforce have the opportunity to nominate their peers for a T&P All-Star Award. This award recognizes individuals who exemplify one or more of our company’s core values. We’d like to introduce you to some of these stand-out folks, including today’s featured winner, Pat Connolly, from our Dublin office.
Preferred name + preferred pronouns
Pat and masculine pronouns.
Current Role
Lead Change Manager
How long have you worked at Salesforce, and how did you land here?
I have just completed 6 years as a Salesforce employee. I got a referral from a friend who worked in Salesforce at the time. My previous role was for a small company that specialized in equipment for Forensic Ballistic Science!
Tell us a bit about your role.
My role is definitely hybrid. My job title reflects the Change Management role which essentially is about balancing the risk of doing a change in production with the business benefit. I figured early on that the tooling and process was not all that it could be and decided to do something about that, so I also wear a tool developer hat, predominantly for Change.
Is there a project you’ve worked on at Salesforce that you’ve particularly enjoyed?
I’m working on one right now that will deploy new objects into GUS for Change Management. We will move from using picklists to categorize to a lookup to records that can be dynamically managed. I love a challenge and doing something where I know the short-term pain is worth it for the long-term gain.
GUS is our in-house solution for planning and keeping track of engineering work. It’s tailored for agile development and scrum, with a heavy emphasis on social interactions. You can find a similar tool on the AppExchange!
The project is a fundamental shift on how Change Case records are created and tracked by all of the various teams involved in Infrastructure & Product Engineering. The project requires making incisive changes to the tool in a way that does not breaking the current functionality. Functionality includes API integrations and reporting capabilities, and the new fields must be deployed in such a way that none of these are broken. To achieve this, the project will be delivered in a phased approach, and is interesting because of the technical and project management challenges.
The way I feel about this project reminds me of doing a parachute jump. I may be quite nervous about jumping but I know the experience will be enjoyable to look back on.
How do you get into the zone to do your best, most productive work?
For abstract type work, I prefer to literally sleep on a problem. I often find the best ideas come after a good night’s sleep.
What’s a piece of software/hardware you couldn’t live without at work?
It may not be glamorous, but in terms of finding and merging changes from one file to another SourceGear’s DiffMerge is a life saver.
What does Salesforce’s value of “trust” mean to you as a technical employee?
From a Change Management perspective, it is about having the right process and tools in place to ultimately do what is best for our customer.
What does Salesforce’s value of “innovation” mean to you as a technical employee?
It is great for anyone who wants to learn and who likes to think outside the box. In my current role there will always be asks from teams who want to do automated integrations with the current IT Service Management (ITSM) tools. I’m a firm believer in innovation and continuous improvement, no matter how small.
What is one of your favorite memories from your time at Salesforce?
Attending a Salesforce colleague’s wedding which had “The Beatles” as the theme. Great fun.
What is something that makes you proud to work at Salesforce?
Salesforce is a company that gives back and I’m very proud to be able to do so for causes that are dear to me.
Share one fact about yourself that others might find surprising.
I’m part of Dun Laoghaire Choral society, a group that regularly performs famous choral pieces by composers like Mozart, Bach, and Handel.
You could work with Pat in Dublin as a Systems Engineer! Apply here or search for other open roles.
