dustyLogic

Welcome to 2010 !

New Year’s Resolutions are a great idea…in theory. In practice however, we set ourselves to fail fast by trying to be too ambitious and too vague to know where to start. In addition, the methodology which we use to accomplish those goals is not the right one. We try to predict and plan too much up front and this is why most of us fail to keep them. If you’re an IT person then you probably heard about the Watefall model, if not, take few minutes to read this or watch this two minute video and don’t forget to come back to this blog post.

Oh great, you’re back…or you never left. So, imagine that your resolutions are software projects. Because everyone has been doing so for years, we don’t question the New Year’s Resolution methodology and we should because it is very Waterfallish. At the beginning of every January, we try to decide what are and how we will achieve our resolutions. With 12 months ahead of us, we are just setting ourselves up to fail and if even feels like lying, doesn’t it? We can try hard, but we can’t possibly predict what will happen over the course of this year. For that very reason, we need to change our thinking and apply a different methodology. While the resolutions remain the same, we need to define them better and come up with a more flexible approach to meet our goals. Such methodology already exists in the IT world. I bet you that at this point you know where this is going. That’s right, Agile, baby! Now let’s try to apply it to non-software projects, more specifically to your New Year’s Resolutions. The main rules of Agile are not plan too far ahead and to make few smaller steps while re-evaluating the situation after every step.

First thing first. Make yourself a cup of coffee, sit down in your favorite chair with a pen and some paper and write down what you would like to achieve this year. This is an important step, so take your time to think. Be realistic, but at the same time try to push the boundaries a bit. This list will be your so called product backlog. Now reorganize it by order of descending priority, then take the first item from the top and break it down into details. Enumerate your requirements, things you’ll need, people you will have to contact, etc. Order those detailed items by ascending chronological order and put an estimate next to each item. (You can do the same thing to the second item as well, but don’t go too far down the list. Chances are things will change before you even get started working on those item.)  This is an important step. What we did here, is we took a goal and we broke it down into smaller more achievable goals, which will allow us to monitor progress and adapt to the unforeseen if needed.

The objective of your mission is to arrive to the destination while having the flexibility of taking different paths along the way. People and events will get in your way. Don’t try to plan for it, rather expect it to happen at some point. Remain positive. Distractions are not necessarily a bad thing, you can learn from them and make adjustments as you go.

Here is where I hand you the ball and run with it. Even if you haven’t been exposed to Agile methodology before, you might not work out perfectly the first time, but keep trying. Once you get into it, you will definitely appreciate the outcome.

Quick tips to help you in your motivation department:

• Make yourself an inspiration board. It’s a great way to keep yourself motivated to stick to the plan. Gather pictures, quotes, whatever reminds you of your goal and pin them somewhere where you can see them everyday.

• Make public commitments. Let your co-workers, friends and family know about the goals you are trying to achieve. This will give you an additional boost to reach your goals. Last year I wanted to stop my coffee drinking habit. Don’t ask why. ….OK, ask why. Because I realized that too much coffee was making me irritable towards the end of the day. I asked few co-workers to spit in my cup if they see me drinking coffee. After I made it public, my additional  motivation was to not give then the satisfaction to do so. (While I’m a it, thanks Dave Mosher for inspecting my cup on a daily basis, it helped ) Moral of the story is, involve others, everyone needs cheer leaders.
• Join a club to surround yourself with people with similar interests. If you like photography, join your local photography club, or join a forum on the Internet. There are plenty of people out there, to share your ideas with.

Start right here right now. Use the comment box below to share your New Year’s resolutions.

Life rocks! Yep, life is awesome! For me, the best thing about life is challenges. Seems like I can’t go through a day without challenging myself. The more I do, the more ideas I get about what to do next, and so on and so on and so on. Recently I found a bug in the way I live my life. I spend most of my time chasing stuff and not because I have to, but because it’s fun. I wish I would spend some time enjoying my achievements before I attack the next challenge standing in front of me.  Just looking at the last 12 months, we bought a brand new house, we got married, I worked on a lot of great projects, I made more money then I expected, I met a lot of cool and smart people, and lots more. But now that I look at it, I just took it all for granted, instead of stopping for a moment to say “WOW” or “sweet”, or whatever sounds fresh those days.

OK, the above paragraph totally sounds like I’m miserable. I’m not. No really, it’s all good. I’m just amazed with the endless pool of things that I can occupy my mind with. I don’t recall ever saying that I’m bored. There is just so many things I want to do. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember last time I brushed my hair, but that’s because I like to keep them short like my phone conversations. Perhaps a slightly different topic? …Anyways.

Recently I decided to brainwash myself by watching documentaries about the “Law of Attraction” (like “The Secret“). I came to the conclusion that it’s pretty much how I have been living my life without even knowing “the secret science” behind it. Yeah, I did have to deal with some unpleasant crap in the past, but I dealt with it and I moved on. Some might argue, but I think that one’s past doesn’t determine one’s future. There are so many different paths to chose from, that the path you chose doesn’t mater that much. That is, as long as you have a goal, a destination which you want to eventually reach and you are motivated to reach it. (The key word here is motivation). It’s sort of like driving on a highway at night. You’re driving from Saskatoon to Vancouver, and you know that you want to end up in Vancouver even if you can’t see it yet. The only thing you can see is what is few hundred feet in front of you, or whatever the headlights can reach. There is always a chance that you will take a wrong turn or you might get a flat, or the car will break down, or you will run out of gas money, or even stop along the way to enjoy the Okanagan Valley, but this might only slow you down, not prevent you from arriving in Vancouver.

So all this to say that life is awesome, and that I plan to take some tome to enjoy it. My goal is to organize myself to find time again for things that I used to have time for before. Like photography, music production, blogging, and most importantly my wife.

Definition of Ballmer Peak: “The theory that computer programmers obtain quasi-magical, superhuman coding ability when they have a blood alcohol concentration percentage between 0.129% and 0.138%. The discovery of this effect is attributed to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft – who probably “discovered” it by simply monitoring his own perpetually inebriated nervous system, and deducing that programming ability “peaks” after a few drinks and then dips dramatically after full-blown drunkenness ensues. …” from Urban Dictionary

Now a graphical proof by xkcd:

I figured it was time for a change, so I moved my blog to WordPress.  Setting it up and importing previous blog went very smoothly.  I did not have much time to play with all the settings, themes and CSS, but it will happen eventually. This new blog not only looks different, but it will contain more as well. Previously it was mostly work related, but there is a lot more going on in my life so I decided to take it one level further and share more with you.  Future posts will tell.

Other then this, as usual, a lot of stuff is happening. Few weeks ago I felt like everyone wanted me to do some work for them. Me being me and constantly trying to push myself to see when will I snap, I did end up accepting them all.  For the first time, I did outsource some of them, and it was a very positive experience. I can definitely get used to outsourcing. It does take a lot of load off my back, but there is a catch. How do you know if the person will do as good of a job as you would? In my case it was simple, I did previously work with the guy and I knew he was good.

So far winter has been awesome. 25C and up, for about 2 weeks now. I’m considering planting some palm trees in my backyard.

It felt like a very short day today. Even if I worked for about 11h, it flew by incredibly fast. I managed to check off a good number of points of my TODO list. I also picked up another 500GB harddrive. Seams like I can never have enough free space.

I feel like attacking a new personal project. I’m thinking an application for my PocketPC which will automatically keep track of my millage and destinations. I could use it to keep a log for business expenses. It could be interesting to see my driving habits at the end of the year. For now I’m using a pen and paper, but that’s so 80’s

Entertainment of the day: CSI Miami. I love how they arrest people because their tire pattern matches a pattern on a crime scene. Every tire is unique. So if you decide to use your own car to rob a bank, at least change your tires on your way back home.

Let me start by apologizing to my loyal blog readers who helped me realize I did not post anything for a week. I ended up working long hours, with almost no room for entertainment (that includes blogging).

Here’s a short summary of the week:

I have to say I’m proud of myself. I didn’t do any work over the last weekend. I did a lot of other computer related stuff, but nothing for my clients. Zero billable hours.

The week didn’t start too good. I figured out I was getting less and less productive with one of my customers. I’m working on few simultaneous projects for him. Each of them requiring maintenance and changes, which eventually lead me to spend 80% of my time dealing with little requests and 20% implementing new features. This is what happens when you deliver a product that is 90% completed and you never get a change to go back and fix those little glitches. So anyways, I had a talk with the client and explained he my new plan. I will stop developing new stuff for few days and concentrate on wrapping up whatever is already in production. He wasn’t too happy in the beginning, but I did manage to make him understand. Things are back to normal now and I learned my lesson.

Entertainment of the day (Monday): An ex-co-worker talking loud on his cell and his explanation why he talks so loud: “Because my friend on the other end was talking too quiet and I couldn’t hear him”. Hmmm…

The rest of the week just flew by. I don’t even remember all the stuff that I accomplished this week. Is that normal? Am I getting old? Another good reason to get back to daily blogging.

Picture: Today’s weather. We have 4 seasons in Saskatchewan: Winter, winter, summer and winter. Summer is really beautiful, but it only lasts one weekend. That was last weekend.

I’m getting addicted to blogging. I helps me re-think my day and plan the next day. I’m also down to 1/2 cup of coffee/day.

Today was a day of real-life examples of bad software design. Likely not my designs, but they do affect the part of project on which I’m working on. Design phase is essential to have a healthy product, dohhh. Why is common sense not so common?

Tomorrow I have a meeting with some big sharks. I should be stressed more then I actually am. At some point in life I realized that no matter how much money you have, how much decision making power you have, you are still human. One thing that all humans have in common, is that none of us likes to get screwed. I don’t like fake smiles and overinflated marketing with lots of fine print. I usually present things as they are and in a very straight-to-the-point manner. Anyways, I’ll let you know how it went.

If you are wondering what’s up with all those little pictures in my posts. Well, I finally dusted off my SLR camera, so I’m posting some random photos of the day. All of them are post-processed in less then 5min.

Entertainment of the day: interview with Rob & Big . I quite like this show, but it looks like it’s over. Big Black got married and has a baby.