Owen's Blog

There are no really studies of what goes right with software projects, there are collections of things that seem to be good signs that you are on the right track. (ie crystal clear and XP both have things you should check yourself against such as Pair Programming or Osmotic Communication) but none of them have a statement that says if you are not doing this at all you will fail to produce the software you aim for (or may not produce anything at all).

There’s very little written about it because there is no such thing. You can be doing everything right and still fail, it’s just down to the law of averages, you’ll just be less likely to fail if you do things in certain ways.

I’ve watched projects fall apart through no fault of any process or individual, just that the goal wasn’t correct or it just wasn’t the right place at the right time.

But I would say that I have one overriding goal to all my projects that I’m working on and that’s discipline.

I want to be disciplined enough to test first, to not go beyond the boundaries of what is needed, to keep to the simplest thing that can possibly work, to not shoot myself or others in the foot with overly complex or untested solutions to simple problems.

It’s one of my guiding mantras. “I will have the discipline to do this right”. Beyond that I have only a couple of preconceptions over what a really good working team needs:

• STTCPW (Simplest thing that can possibly work)
• Unit tests (the more behavior oriented and encapsulated the better)
• Continuous Integration (the more regular the better)
• Tight communication (Get up and walk to the person, don’t send an email)

Once all these are in place I’m generally happy, if not I’m generally thinking about how to get them into place.

What do you find the most important part of your work?

Those of you who listen to the drivel of my twitter tweets will know that the first week at the new job has seen me playing [by which I mean banging my head against a brick wall]. While the concept of WCF is sound, actually brilliant, the flexibility is great, I just wish it took the convention over configuration route, it’s seriously a pain to configure and test. The actual functionality took maybe 5 hours of my time last week, the configuration and debugging then took a full 3 days, and that’s just for a pretty simple system. So I’m not feeling like a great big fan, I’d prefer something that could be encapsulated in unit tests much nicer.

Anyhow, the job goes well, the product and the office environment are stunning. Really this is a consumer lead product, it’s so refreshing to be using technology to fulfil a genuine desire/need rather than adding features for features sake.

So I’m still very enthusiastic.

well the new job is here and underway, mostly been spent installing and configuring my new PC, but it feels great to be in a dynamic environment, the whole office is really friendly and laid back which I’m enjoying, just really want to get my hands dirty and doing some paid for work, I feel like a bit of dead weight at the moment. I know it’s only the second day and it’s hard to dive straight into work, it’s just weird moving off a project half way through to become the new guy again (almost wrote noob there).

I’ve manage to get a first eyeball of the code, so at least that’s a start. I just hope I never have to install visual studio 2005 sp1 for a while. man that’s a seriously slow install.

Back to it I guess..

Today has been a struggle. I have managed to achieve so very little, I should be safely in bed asleep by now, but I have a serious load of work to do before the end of the week (and my current employment ends).

That and the fact that I managed to mess up the evening by

1) Not getting everything from the super market the first time, meaning a second trip wasting about 30 mins of my evening.

2) Not cooking like I promised Katy I would. I managed to zone out, after getting home and unpacking the second load of shopping I went and fed the plants, let the bird out of the cage for a run around, and then slumped on the couch to play on the XBox for 30 mins before cooking, only 30 mins turned into an hour and before I knew it Katy was home, and less than impressed.

Bugger!

reset and retry tomorrow.