You have written your code, ran it and looks ready to be committed. Once is committed it can be tested by another member of a the team. However,why no write some comments for your code before committing it, which will help you find some bugs.  By writing comments, you will have to dissect your code piece by piece, which will lead you to find common errors and makes your code understandable for other (and your future you).

Is not just about just writing one liners, write them with the following set of mind: it will be read by somebody that knows nothing about the applications or program, imagining the target reader is a new member of your team. This will help you see your code from a different perspective and go into details. By submerging in to details, you will  find bugs in your code before going into the testing stage.

There are two advantages of this method: First your code is readable and readable code is better code. Second, you save resources by saving a bug report. Testers will not test code, find bugs and return it to you. You will NOT stop your current task and go back to fix a careless bug and resubmit it for testing. Instead you will spend your time producing new code.

Drop the clichés, forget about what a engineer and a artist are suppose to do and don’t judge based on the university title or gender.

This is the information revolution, where anybody with the will power to learn, can be anything they want. Sure the revolution hasn’t reach everybody on the planet, but is on it way. In the meantime, just remember that you can wear any hat you wish and more importantly, anybody can wear the hat the want, even yours.

So, my proposal is that in those workplaces, companies and startups where project managements: “are managing the resources of a software project”, ditch them (or if you are nice give them a chance to get a new hat).

Management of people kills creativity, instead provide mentorship: guide instead of dictating. Get people that can lead by nurturing the skills of the people around them and help them focus, instead of “try to put off that fire or cure the itch”.

Let the artist write software and the engineer design, it might not be appealing but, it is a start of something different and sometimes different is good.

Universities and corporations develop software with a “hangover” (of classical concepts) from the days of punch cards and mainframes. Today we don’t need to control computer resources, since they are widely available. The access to information about programming is available on the instant and to anybody with access to Internet. However, universities still teach concepts that where design to control scarce resources, when there not scarce anymore. IT departments still try to use these concepts, to manage the projects and comply with internal politics.

There is a belief that everything needs a project plan, progress reports, Testing Procedure Specification (TPS) documents to make sure that everything is on budget. I find it ironic that we spend money on making sure we don’t go over budget. What is the point of writing stuff that nobody is going to read.

Cure for the hangover? Embrace chaos! Give some liberty to people to work without reporting or detailing everything. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how you did it, the point is that you did it right.

Like my mom used to say:

All roads lead to Rome

Just because is different, doesn’t mean is good or bad, the point is to get where we want and on time.

I get a call around 6:00 pm on Friday. I’m at work and is a friend, he wanted to know if I’m interested in going with him to a Romanian Rock Concert. He had a extra ticket (so for me is for free), even if I felt tiered and had just 2 hours to get there, I thought: “why not”.

My friend, called me twice to see where I was, he wanted me to be there on time. I found it odd, since its a rock concert, who cares if I’m late, there is always a opening band. When I got there quarter past 8 pm, I see him dressed nicely, making a big fuss of not making any noise and that they had started. At this point I’m lost, thinking “what is the deal here?”. Then we enter the balcony, and while taking a glimpse at the stage and the people in their seats (of the Sodra Teatern in Stockholm) : I see four persons on stage, three with Violins and one with a Cello. I had misunderstood, it was a Romanian Quartet Concert, not Romanian Rock Concert.

Let me tell you, that the experience was mind blowing. First my favorite instrument to listen too, is the violin. In addition, I recently got the album of Yo Yo Ma’s playing Bach Suites (1 to 6) on the Cello. Finally, it was interpretation of folk music, occasionally adding some visual elements on the screen. It was great stuff, I couldn’t ask for more.

All this got me to thinking, that be best experiences come when you don’t have any expectations. In my case, I didn’t expect nothing, I didn’t have any time to even get the wrong expectations ( me thinking it was a Rock Concert). And there I was delighted, thankful and with a experience to remember.

We will always have expectations of things to come or people that we will meet. We have expectations when you take a trip, go abroad to study, go to watch a movie movies, buy a new laptop or when we go for a date. We know something is coming, we can’t resist the uncertainty of not knowing nothing, so we start to research and form ideas on the head of what the experience will be (comparing to previous ones). In some cases we might live experience before the event has happened.

Expectations are like a ball with holes. When we start to have them, the ball starts to form, however it can NOT be completed because to be filled, we have to live the event or use the product we bought. So, there we are with a ball with holes, waiting for them to be filled when we reach that moment. Sometimes we get what we expected, sometimes they exceeded or all wholes are not filled, so we need more time. In other occasion we are disappointed . Our disappointments come when we are presented with something different, that doesn’t meet or fit the ball we created. It actually could be because it sucked, however (especially with people and places) we forget to see the big picture or form a new ball, which permits us to have a different experience.

(Source)

Expectations are part of our life and are difficult not to have them. However managing expectations is key aspect, not just in how we experience life but in business and management. Everybody has expectations of the products we launch, the service we provide or how our employees perform. Sometimes those expectations are linked to money, meaning that for X amount of money we EXPECT a return equivalent to X. And then is when things get more complicated, because how do you measure a return, when expectations may blur the way you see things.

As a consumer or a producer, as a manager or a employee, most of the time we don’t have the option of having no expectations, instead we have to manage them and align them in a way that everybody understand what is coming and what is not. However in life that is another story as The Ink Spots say in one of their songs: “The best things in life are free”. Should I expect everything that is free to be the best?

Some time ago I found projectcartoon.com. It is a site where you build a cartoon (or joke) of project management. It actually can be used to illustrated various real life scenarios. I guess every company should have one of those project, that ended like the cartoon.

I decided to do mine; from the point of view of how I see some startups working with web applications. If you like to download it here is the link. Bellow you can see a reduced version. Enjoy, because I know I did.

(Click on it to see bigger version)

(click to view bigger version)

The image above shows how most software projects are executed or done. The swing is something we can related to and is simple to understand, however it is easy to get wrong, if we don’t communicate well.

Doesn’t matter if a portal, software for a customer or in house solution, most of the time, it is how it goes. The main reason? Nobody in the team is on same page and by team is everybody, including the customers. And for that to occur, dialogue, trust, research, time, respect and patience is needed (missing any, ends up like the swing story board).

Like the film industry, a great movie will de the result of all the people involve being on sync. The difference between a great project and a bad project is the team. And as Al Pacino in “Any Given Sunday” said:

Either we heal, NOW as a team… or we will die, as individuals