Structured, yes or no?
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Too much structure can cause a lot of useless output. My current example: I'm testing the MVVM Toolkit from MS (which is based on the very popular MVVMLight from Galasoft). When you install the NuGet package of the MVVM Toolkit it comes along with 6 or 7 other packages. And when you create a new build it adds more than 100 files to your debug folder !! MVVMLight from Galasoft did add less than 10 files.
Well, and then there is me: Why on earth would you use a toolkit for MVVM. But I am starting to accept that either: 1) I did not understand MVVM and by accident created something that is way simpler to program 2) A lot of other people are misunderstanding MVVM. I do not care which one it is, as long as those toolkits are kept away from my software. :D
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I think your post is talking about two different things. The first one is process. You don't need guidelines or rules to follow until something bad happens. Then you put something in place to reduce the chances of it happening again, even if working alone. The second one is stability. I would also get annoyed if priorities were constantly changing. It's also not an effective way to work when you often have to drop one thing for another. Returning to where you left off takes time. And if you never return to it, you wasted time on something that wasn't needed. The less churn, the better. Wanting to know what's coming months in advance may be unrealistic, but knowing what's coming this week isn't. It won't always work out as planned, but it usually should.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Greg Utas wrote:
The less churn, the better. Wanting to know what's coming months in advance may be unrealistic, but knowing what's coming this week isn't. It won't always work out as planned, but it usually should.
True, but our churn is dependent on that of our customers. If they have churn, we have it too. The difference is that we're getting paid for it.
Greg Utas wrote:
And if you never return to it, you wasted time on something that wasn't needed.
I've been hearing this a lot too. Frankly, I don't really care. It's nice when customers use your software, but if they don't, they don't. As long as they pay for it it's not my time that was wasted, but their money.
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How many clients do you have? Because if I drop whatever I am working on because client "A" think it is important... what about clients "B-Z"? Support cases gets priority (i.e. the product can't do something it should be able to do and it affects their business), but besides that we can't interrupt the team every time a client gets "a good idea".
A couple, but sometimes it's like that. Last month, I had months of work ahead of me, but someone quit his job and months of work kind of evaporated and priorities for this customer changed quite a bit. Yesterday I had a call with the customer and we're now going to pick up a new project while postponing the previous one. So, I now have weeks of work for this client alone, while yesterday I had none, while last month I had months (talk about churn) :doh: Of course, that resulted in other customers getting more priority with their changes. Meanwhile, another customer called this morning, his reporting didn't work, took me half a day to fix. Of course I'm not doing everything ASAP, but when a client calls it usually has to be scheduled in later this week, or at least somewhere this month.
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And that's always been the case. Priorities change. I don't know what the "official" Kanban approach to that is, but we shift tasks between the "doing" and the "backlog" and the "on hold" statuses quite often because of shifting priorities. It doesn't mean you can't plan your day, it just means that sometimes you change your plans.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
TNCaver wrote:
it just means that sometimes you change your plans.
And sometimes multiple times a day :laugh: Maybe this is also because I'm alone working on multiple projects? I guess when you're in a team people have their own clients and projects and maybe there's a bit more stability.
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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Try something like a Trello task board. If your project is hosted on GitHub, there's a Trello add-in that will allow comments during commits to become tasks. Here's a sample board New Requests Requests being worked Requests being tested Requests completed This will give both of you the ability to see what's in queue and give your friend the structure he needs.
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Greg Utas wrote:
The less churn, the better. Wanting to know what's coming months in advance may be unrealistic, but knowing what's coming this week isn't. It won't always work out as planned, but it usually should.
True, but our churn is dependent on that of our customers. If they have churn, we have it too. The difference is that we're getting paid for it.
Greg Utas wrote:
And if you never return to it, you wasted time on something that wasn't needed.
I've been hearing this a lot too. Frankly, I don't really care. It's nice when customers use your software, but if they don't, they don't. As long as they pay for it it's not my time that was wasted, but their money.
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I can see why you wouldn't care if the customer is paying anyway. It's probably a personality thing. Like your colleague, I don't like being yanked around in one direction, then another. I would tell the customer that churn has a cost and suggest that we work together to better determine the requirements in advance. If they didn't want to do that, OK, they're the customer. But not one that I'd gladly take on again.
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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When working alone, do whatever you feel comfortable with. I suspect that even then, you impose some structure on your work. When working with someone else, some structure is essential. This is necessary so you can coordinate your work - for example if your team member is designing the UI, you don't want to have him/her sitting around waiting for you to implement & test it while you write the data access layer. This does not mean that you need to implement all the requirements of the American DoD. :omg: :) As always, YMMV.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Greg Utas wrote:
The less churn, the better. Wanting to know what's coming months in advance may be unrealistic, but knowing what's coming this week isn't. It won't always work out as planned, but it usually should.
True, but our churn is dependent on that of our customers. If they have churn, we have it too. The difference is that we're getting paid for it.
Greg Utas wrote:
And if you never return to it, you wasted time on something that wasn't needed.
I've been hearing this a lot too. Frankly, I don't really care. It's nice when customers use your software, but if they don't, they don't. As long as they pay for it it's not my time that was wasted, but their money.
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I beg to differ. Money is not the only reason I write code. Another reason is the satisfaction of knowing that people find it useful and are using it. Basically, I'm happy when my client are happy with what they paid for. This is also a good way to ensure repeat business.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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Good to see this discussion, and particularly that there are plenty of (other) folk out there who "just get on with it". I think the key is absolutely the number of people involved, even if they're not directly developers, but maybe sys admins etc. Currently I've active projects for three different clients, and juggling priorities on a daily basis between them. (All the while trying to keep my hours down as I'm nominally retired and SWMBO expects me to be available for walks / shopping / chores at home!) My "planning" process is essentially a notepad file per client of high-level requests. I charge for "reactive" stuff by the hour (e.g. 1st line support, urgent fixes) and for new features on a fixed-price basis. The fixed-price stuff means that I have effectively drawn a line around how much is going to change and how long I should be spending on it. Where I know that these mini-projects have an interdependency (e.g. they involve changes to the same module) I'll combine them and quote for the combination. Because I've been the sole "IT person" working with these clients for an average of 5 years, I know their businesses very well and am (almost) integrated into their staff. That means that, while ultimately they set the priorities and authorise work, I'm in a position where I know the impact of changes and can give a good steer as to what is going to have the most positive impact per £ of my time on their business. I can back that recommendation up and 95% of the time they are happy to go with it. Of course new requirements come into the business, often driven by specific customers, but I can assimilate the pros and cons of changes very quickly and suggest changes to schedules to accommodate. As far as my clients are concerned, they're each my primary focus. I try to make sure that work for one never adversely impacts projects for another. If it looks like there may be a clash coming up, I ask one of them a difficult question that needs a decision; that usually delays things for a couple of weeks! Because it's "just me" and the projects are big but not massive, I can internalise all the pending changes and understand what the dependencies are. If it were a bigger project with a bigger team, that probably wouldn't be possible and we'd need to plan it all out in much more detail. Before going freelance (some 30 years ago now! :omg: ), I was in a role called "Design Authority" which involved co-ordinating all the various development projects of a fair-sized corporation. My job was to make sure that things
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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Sander Rossel wrote:
It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc.
No offense, but I would not want to work with someone like you. That sounds like a lot of unnecessary stress.
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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If he is a designer, then he should be an analyst too. Tell him to reverse engineer what's been done so far and come up with leveled (function) diagrams. You can then discuss things, moving forward, from a common base. Level 0: context diagram; 1 page level 1: main functions (max 7) 1 page. level 2: explosion of level 1. etc. Stop at any level / function once achieving enlightenment.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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I've always been a bit of a cowboy coder. Has everything to do with my first job and it fits my personality, I think. Not one for lots of rules or things set in stone. My customers prefer it that way too, they're too busy to worry about the development process, they just want a working project delivered. I've always disliked scrum for that reason, way to much red tape! Oh, and I dread the "we can't do that until the next sprint" reply from companies! X| So I'm now working with an external designer (who is also a friend), and he has some problems with this way of working. It's basically constant changes, shifting priorities, loose deadlines (if at all), etc. He prefers to know what's up for today, the next two weeks, and the coming months, in that order. A change should be requested up front, planned, etc. So basically he prefers (the rigidity of) scrum*. It even affects his mood in that he doesn't feel like working because he doesn't know what to expect. As far as I know he's not on the autism spectrum. Needless to say, as a good developer-manager I'm now trying to keep him out of the chaos and bring some structure to his tasks. What are the preferences here? * I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it
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Sander Rossel wrote:
What are the preferences here?
Most of the places I've worked followed ISO 9001[^] standard which has strict requirements for planning and documentation. There really isn't much of a choice for some people. In order to get ISO certification[^] there has to be a full-time auditor on staff to ensure the process is strictly followed.
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Sander Rossel wrote:
What are the preferences here?
Most of the places I've worked followed ISO 9001[^] standard which has strict requirements for planning and documentation. There really isn't much of a choice for some people. In order to get ISO certification[^] there has to be a full-time auditor on staff to ensure the process is strictly followed.
ISO-9001. :laugh:
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ISO-9001. :laugh:
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Greg Utas wrote:
ISO-9001. :laugh:
Yeah, tell me about it. It's been revised over the years but at one point we were required to write the requirements and documentation *before* we wrote the code. Was damn near impossible to do without revisions. I worked on some of the vessel nav software you see on this site[^]. Looks like they even kept my GUI after 15 years. There was an upside, the beer in Norway is much better than the watered down stuff here. :)
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Greg Utas wrote:
ISO-9001. :laugh:
Yeah, tell me about it. It's been revised over the years but at one point we were required to write the requirements and documentation *before* we wrote the code. Was damn near impossible to do without revisions. I worked on some of the vessel nav software you see on this site[^]. Looks like they even kept my GUI after 15 years. There was an upside, the beer in Norway is much better than the watered down stuff here. :)
I don't have a problem with writing the requirements before the code. But I have a big problem with detailed design documents. My experience is that trying to do much more than a high-level design is a waste of time. The code will later speak to me, and the details will change. I saw more than a few detailed design documents that ran to 200 pages and more. All that time would have been far better spent coding from the high-level design and iterating the software to make it excellent.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I don't have a problem with writing the requirements before the code. But I have a big problem with detailed design documents. My experience is that trying to do much more than a high-level design is a waste of time. The code will later speak to me, and the details will change. I saw more than a few detailed design documents that ran to 200 pages and more. All that time would have been far better spent coding from the high-level design and iterating the software to make it excellent.
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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Heh, We were inventing some of the technology. It's hard to document and determine requirements for technologies that don't exist yet. ISO 9001 just doesn't work well for R&D, it works better in other areas. :) One of the things I really miss about working on maritime/navy software was my exposure to high level/new technologies.
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A couple, but sometimes it's like that. Last month, I had months of work ahead of me, but someone quit his job and months of work kind of evaporated and priorities for this customer changed quite a bit. Yesterday I had a call with the customer and we're now going to pick up a new project while postponing the previous one. So, I now have weeks of work for this client alone, while yesterday I had none, while last month I had months (talk about churn) :doh: Of course, that resulted in other customers getting more priority with their changes. Meanwhile, another customer called this morning, his reporting didn't work, took me half a day to fix. Of course I'm not doing everything ASAP, but when a client calls it usually has to be scheduled in later this week, or at least somewhere this month.
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Scrum grew out to solve a different problem that the one you have. It was an answer to the world of large teams running waterfall with Gantt-charts and other horrible things. So I would cross that one our right away in your situation, but I would also recommend you stop with remarks as "I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it" as that directly translate to "I tried to use this screwdriver as a hammer, and it sucks so it is a bad tool." Kanban is a known "lighter" alternative, but it might still be too rigid for you. Look at it and see if there is one or two things you can take our of it - maybe as little as a prioritized list where you show restraint from changing the top item unless really needed is enough. I have seen teams receiving "Why is that feature I asked about just before the last two emails asking for urgent features not finished yet" emails while they are still working on the last email. A list makes something like this apparent - it it might also make it easier both for you and the customer to judge "do I REALLY need to change the priority right now, or will tomorrow do".
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Scrum grew out to solve a different problem that the one you have. It was an answer to the world of large teams running waterfall with Gantt-charts and other horrible things. So I would cross that one our right away in your situation, but I would also recommend you stop with remarks as "I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it" as that directly translate to "I tried to use this screwdriver as a hammer, and it sucks so it is a bad tool." Kanban is a known "lighter" alternative, but it might still be too rigid for you. Look at it and see if there is one or two things you can take our of it - maybe as little as a prioritized list where you show restraint from changing the top item unless really needed is enough. I have seen teams receiving "Why is that feature I asked about just before the last two emails asking for urgent features not finished yet" emails while they are still working on the last email. A list makes something like this apparent - it it might also make it easier both for you and the customer to judge "do I REALLY need to change the priority right now, or will tomorrow do".
lmoelleb wrote:
but I would also recommend you stop with remarks as "I know scrum should be the opposite of rigid, but that's not at all how I've experienced it" as that directly translate to "I tried to use this screwdriver as a hammer, and it sucks so it is a bad tool."
I'm really not the only one saying that and I think many people here would agree with me. Actually, I believe one of the writers of the original manifesto said something along the lines of that it was meant to grow more agile, but teams are now stuck in their scrum ways and holy two-week cycles. I think it's so hard to implement correctly because it's based around change and many people don't react to change very well. I've literally been in the situation where we were two days into a sprint when management came in and said, "things changed, we don't need what you're doing now, we need that other thing." And the team was like, bad luck, we're finishing this sprint anyway because that's what we committed to, and then start on the work you need. That's two weeks wasted! Or how about, this story has a very high priority, but we don't know if the business wants the button red or green, so we'll have to refine it further and it'll have to wait for the next sprint. That's not adding value, that's just mindlessly clinging to some process to the point where it does more damage than good. Two distinct teams by the way.
lmoelleb wrote:
Kanban is a known "lighter" alternative, but it might still be too rigid for you.
Kanban is actually fine! Not doing it now since I'm alone most of the time, but a good one for working with that designer. I'm working on growing the team and I definitely need something like that.
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Sander Rossel wrote:
What are the preferences here?
Most of the places I've worked followed ISO 9001[^] standard which has strict requirements for planning and documentation. There really isn't much of a choice for some people. In order to get ISO certification[^] there has to be a full-time auditor on staff to ensure the process is strictly followed.
Ugh, that kind of thing is just about having a process to have a process. It probably works for some businesses and some people, or maybe people thought it did because other things didn't. Maybe I'll someday look into it or need it, when I'm bigger and want to attract a specific kind of customer who's willing to pay for such overhead. Although I've worked at an ISO-9001 certified company (or at least they were in the process of getting certified) and it was pretty much a joke. Worst company I've worked at, mostly because of a few very incompetent and toxic people. Because ISO checks processes, not competence or result :)
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