Guide to pants off living
February 2005
Stories
Monday, 21 February 2005
Oooh, I can't wait for 37 Signals to continue to explain this one. Since my buddies started working in agile teams I've been trying to interpret some of their new techniques in my creative environment.
About six months ago I started experimenting with the technique of breaking down my programming tasks into little stories. These absolutely non-technical simple one liners were to explain and interpret my work back to those who had assigned me those tasks. While at first these have been "agreement" documents. I think there is an understanding that these can be written from the start to help build an understanding of what our projects are going to be from the outset.
While I'm certain that I'm executing any strict agile methodology here, I believe that this technique is building a nice bridge between creative thinkers, grossly non-technical account managers and me - the programmery type guy. Most importantly though, people are happy. I can still design and estimate well against these stories and I have evidence about the initial application idea when designers 'create' or 'evolve' a concept with additional 'features'.
Posted by travo at 9:19:32 AM
Plumbers Crack
Tuesday, 08 February 2005
This morning we had a bit of a slight plumbing mishap (our shower decided that it didn't want to turn off!) so we reached out to our preferred plumber for some help. Within an hour a bloke had turned up ready to help us out. Excellent.
And this morning I had a revelation about how the kind of programming that I do is very similar to plumbing, and that there might be parallels in the way a plumber manages their larger projects along with the day to day crisees that folks like we have.
Usually, I'm scheduled in to work on significant projects, something that could take a couple of weeks to a few months to complete. For those projects I'll have some significant targets and, while I'm working on those projects, I'll have to communicate with those key stakeholders on a regular basis to ensure that the work I'm doing is meeting with their expectations.
As you would expect, while I'm working on a significant project, there are the irregular requests for urgent work on other things; we need this report, there's some new content to go up on this website, can you please prepare a quote for this project.
See where I'm going? Our plumber friend was probably on his way to a building site where he is working on a major plumbing project. He was also able to manage a few irregular requests.
I wonder what this means to him and his main project, how does he deal with smaller projects causing the deadlines to shift? Does he care at all? As I type this I'm thinking about all my mates who have had unpleasant experiences with tradies for these very reasons.
But I can imagine the parallels though in what I do. I just hope that I'm getting better at a few things; 1. not freaking out when irregular requests arise, 2. making sure that I communicate to my key stakeholders what the impact of those irregular requests have on any main projects and, 3. ensuring that I don't take responsibility for the prioritisation of major projects over irregular requests - that belongs to someone else.
Posted by travo at 8:36:50 PM
Right Tool For the Job
Monday, 07 February 2005
Ever since I was a little tacker, I've always been told to use the right tool for the job; a screwdriver is not a chisel. This useful knowledge can be applied to so many environments and tools. Unfortunately though, it's not always easy place a price on a poor choice of tool or evaluate the cost of choosing an inappropriate environment to work in.
Sometimes though, the messages that you get about a required result mean that you may not choose the right tool you need to achieve that result. There are other factors too; how much someone wants to spend and how soon they want the result.
Last week I was given the opportunity to quote on some work and I made some choices based on the information I was given about the requirements presented. Unfortunately, I found out today that we didn't win the job. I was pretty disappointed. But I also found out that, I could have chosen a different tool. Awww crap.
If I had chosen the alternate tool, we might have won the job - there certainly would have been a reduced cost. I think we would have had to set some boundaries around the requirements though and sometimes this in of itself can influence a customer negatively; do they sacrifice features for cost, or do they try to push back on us to get the most amount of features for their outlay. Well, this is a no-brainer : they're going to try to get the most bang for their buck. We all want this.
So did I make the right choice? - I think I did. Given the information presented to me at the time. We also had very little time to respond to the customers request for a quote and, in all honesty, I don't think that we were the 'prime' for the job anyway; we may have been a secondary quote giver. It happens.
Next time, I'll ask more questions. Find out more. But next time, as with everything, I'll know more about the tools and resources at my avail.
As for choosing the right environment... well, it's not what you think; it's not about Windows vs *nix, it's about home recording vs studio recording.
The Prozac Blues Band has been rehearsing a whole bunch of songs over the last four weeks or so and last weekend we recorded nine tracks over the course of two very long days.
Congratulations to all, I think that what we achieved was awesome.
But I still wonder, since we spent about six hours setting up the house before we could begin - could we have set up quicker if we were in the right environment with the right resources? Don't know. How much could we have gained in output? How much more would we have spent using a studio? What have we sacrificed working at home? How much has it saved us?
None the less, we got some cracking tracks that I'm very happy with. We've got a lot of spit and polish to do now though and hopefully, when the time comes, we'll choose the right environment to get that work done.
I'll let you know when the album is available.
Posted by travo at 9:18:48 PM