The Retrospector

I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing the last few months. I’m inspired to write again today after seeing that one of my favorite bloggers has just published a book and released it this week. The book is actually a more formal version of his entire blog worth of thoughts, and probably more. Either way, I’m ordering a copy for myself and can’t wait to flip through it.The blog is Rands in Repose by Michael Lopp, and his new book is called Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager.

Stumbling onto Rands

About 6-8 months ago I stumbled onto a post Rands had that just cracked me up. Something about ‘What To Do When You’re Screwed‘ just made me want more, so I started to dig into the archives and see what this guy was like. I was hooked after spot-checking a few more posts about N.A.D.D. and Agenda Detection so I just decided to start at the beginning and read or skim through this guy’s entire last five years of articles.

Now, normally during any given week I’ll surf the web and come up with a bunch of great articles that I want to write about myself. Reading Rands’ archives made me want to just keep on reading to the point where I’d hear a little voice in my head saying “just go read a couple more of his posts, you can always write your stuff later…” Madness, I’ve never been quite so mesmerized by someone’s blog since I went through Joel’s a couple years back. It literally took me a few months to get through Rands’ archives, mostly because I kept reading even the stuff that wasn’t interesting just because I wanted to know more about the author and loved his style of writing. He’s got a great sense of humor and writing style, that I’ve found myself doing the same things.

Turning your blog into an opportunity

I wanted to give a little exposure for this guy because I really think the audience of this blog (yes, I still actually have quite an audience according to my logs) would enjoy his material. Secondly, I’d like to point out that this guy has really done things right by building almost a brand on his old net handle. He started a blog, let it grow over time by adding valuable thoughts (and plenty of other not-so-valuable tid-bits, but they’re pretty funny either way), then formally bound them all into a book that people can BUY (read: CHA-CHING!!!) and read. This is a perfect example of how someone can make an indirect income as a result of their blog.
Sure, there’s plenty of people out there that have published books about their related blog material…I’m sure they’re interesting too. None of them have ever made me want to do the same though. Not that I’d write a book about IT or management, but everyone has so much in life to contribute for others to learn from or laugh at…it’s a shame I haven’t tried already.

So to wrap this up, a big thanks to Rands for sharing his thoughts with the world via web and paper. (I’ll probably refer to him quite a bit going forward.) And to everyone else out there, take a peek at his site if you haven’t already. He’s definitely a worthwhile RSS subscription.

Chances are, you’ve only read the title and are probably a gamer or a developer of some kind thinking to yourself “yeah, right on man!” Let me assure you, this is not just some measly attempt to pat myself on the back or anyone I know that fits the part. (Well, that’s like half the people I know but whatever…I’m not trying to favor anyone here.)

The point I’d like to make in this post is something I’ve felt for a very long time and have seen ample proof of it since way back in my college days: Almost anyone I’ve seen that is serious about gaming has the potential for being a great developer. disclaimer: I’ve seen some really good programming come from people not interested in games, so it’s not like I’m saying ONLY gamers can code their way out of a wet paper bag. I’ve just recently dipped into gaming again after having given up the addiction for awhile.

Background

My very first interest in electronics came from gaming. My first game was Pac-Man on an old brown Atari or something. Growing up, I could make a quarter last 30 minutes at an arcade if there was a Pac-Man game of some kind. The game concept is very simple. You eat the pellets, the ghosts chase you and you either clear the board or die. As a 5-year-old, making that little monochrome chomping square race around the screen while never even looking left still intrigued me to no end. In no time, I’d mastered the game’s mechanics and used every bit of knowledge possible to last longer than anyone else that played. The timing of power-pellet use… Knowing which ghost used what maneuvers to try to catch you… Once I understood how each part of the game worked I could use it to my advantage as a component of the entire game-mastering symphony of IN-YOUR-FACE-GHOST moves. Read the rest of this post »

For those of you familiar with the previous site design, you’ll probably notice a significant change. The new layout contains a number of changes that are behind the scenes and may not be noticeable to most of you, but it has been quite an enlightening project for me.

Getting more technical

For the past couple of months, I’ve spent more time concentrating on hosting the site in a more maintenance-free design where I can focus on the content instead of the look and feel. The previous version of the blog was a very rough-drafted hack that was more of a rapid prototype than anything else. I used it to learn a bit more about php and blogging in general.

I’ve now applied the knowlege gained the last year toward a design that I like and know that the plans I have for the site will be easy to put in place because of the thought put into the project.

Designing for the future

This really leads into my next post that I’m working on about designing towards low maintentance, but I’ll just not discuss it more. Mostly, I’m excited about finishing up some major projects and milestones in my life and am celebrating by launching this new design at the same time.

In the meantime, please know that I’ll continue to tweak things and wrap up some of the customizations I’ve yet to complete that didn’t seem quite as important as the change-over happening now instead of later.

Ok, so now what?

Another side-effect of spending more time on the site mechanics the last couple of months is that I have just tons of topics that I’m wanting to post about. I look forward to sharing my thoughts again on a more regular basis. In the meantime, I’ll just marinate my posts for awhile until they make their way to the site.

Here I am an entire month after tinkering with a site re-design (which I’ll be activating this week), and I just can’t seem to help myself from getting nervous before making the drastic change. There’s simply no getting around the anticipation of a change that everyone will be able to see, and know that you had some hand in the effort…even if it is as simple as changing a WordPress template choice and customizing it to your liking.

I’ve got a few things to say about this subject, as I’ve had experience with quite a few of these in the past of various shapes and sizes.

1. If you’re not nervous the minute you go live, you’re probably doing something wrong.

I’ve only been on one project where I felt really good about launch day. I didn’t have a care in the world the couple days before-hand. Needless to say, I spent most of my waking hours the next week just trying to keep everything from falling apart. Of course there’s many lessons learned about projects as you get more practice, but being a little nervous and doing my best about being aware of things all the way up to the last minute is routine for me on project lifecycles now.

2. The longer you’ve had a plan and been able to stick to it, the more successful it will be.

Of all the projects I’ve been involved with, the ones that had the most project planning were the most successful. Now I, of all people, am not the over-planning type and generally take shortcuts wherever I can if it will save a project from being late. However, I totally respect the art of planning when it comes to completing a successful deliverable. There’s a few exceptions to the rule here, but in general…the more planning the project had, the better the odds were for an on-time completion.

3. Less scope creep typically means less defects.

Let’s face it. Scope creep happens on almost every project. For anyone following an iterative life-cycle, something along one of the iterations shown to the customer will trigger a response from them that forces you to change a few things. I don’t see anything wrong with changing some things along the way, but from what I’ve seen is…the more it happens, the more defects you will be likely to find in your final deliverable. This becomes less of a problem as your team gains experience in dealing with refactoring, risk-analysis on proposed changes to your designs, etc. Either way, the less scope creep you have, the more solid your delivered product will be.

4. Enjoy the rush, most things after go-live are maintenance for awhile.

There is nothing quite like the adrenaline rush of a newly released product. That overdose of sheer cosmic power that forces the blood through your ego-veins is sometimes impossible to maintain within your body’s limits. Sure, there’s going to be panic-moments after a launch where you react to get things under control…but for crying out loud, take a moment to really congratulate yourself on the delivery. You worked hard to get to this moment. Enjoy it. Enjoy it before you think too hard about the fact that you’re going to have your hands full of all the maintenance items that will stem from this launch or deployment. Rest assured, it normally settles down and you can go back to working on another creative assignment. For the near future though, you’re pretty much stuck in a fix-it mode until you know you have something solid.

5. There’s just nothing quite like it.

The thrill of delivering a final product to a customer is just unbeatable in my book. I’m really a customer-centric employee more often than most I guess. The best part about my job is that I know I’m bringing value to my customers and feeling a real sense of pride in my abilities as they marvel over their new “toys”. Sometimes it’s just the sigh of relief they make as you prevent a crisis or save hours of mindless work for someone through automating something for them. No matter what your service is…building a pile of success stories is not only good for your marketable profile, but it’s reassurance that you’re capable of meeting your goals repeatedly. Nothing is quite like knowing you can back up your “fightin’ words” when you have to throw down your estimations or opinions for future projects.

So what is it that you anticipate before going live on a project? Preparation and size of project usually effects my expectations. What factors effect yours? I find it just a little amusing that I still get nervous over simple little website changes when I’m also working on a project that makes this entire blog look like a single pixel on my screen of responsibility. I guess that’s just a habit I’ll never get over. Oh well, I’ll just enjoy it while I can.

Tags: anticipation, project+go-live, scope-creep, deliverables