Where Does The Time Go?

When you start a project, don't you marvel at how efficient you are? How much you can get done in so little time? Why can't we always be that efficient? There are a number of reasons why efficiency drops off. Producing documentation (oh, you want someone else to help you, or you want someone else to use your project?), meetings (you need to work with these other people?), and bug fixes are the primary detractors from producing new functionality.

I've said before that Line of Code count is a horrible metric for measuring software development. It's like measuring hammer strokes in building a house, or the number of licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. So I will be using percentage of time as a virtual metric. What percentage of time is spent in which task is a much more useful estimation than counting the number of nails used in a wall.

When you start a project, obviously most of your time is spent building new features. There may be some note-taking along the way to help you remember what you're doing, but really you're just trying to produce something that works, to solve your original problem. As you move along, there will be a equilibrium between new code, bug fixes, documentation, and meetings. You will wind up with a graph that looks like this:

Good amount of new growth, reasonable amount of bugs being fixed, not too much other stuff. Enough documentation to be useful, but not so much as to be a mountain. A few meetings to discuss what's going on and how it's going.

Compare to these two horror cases:













or













Given that there are only 24 hours in a day (please don't let my boss find that out...), for every additional chunk of time taken doing something else, that's time that can't be spent building software. So how do we maximize the time spent building software, and find the sustainable balance between too much documentation and too little? That's a topic for another day.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

I woke up this morning and thought to myself "How does Santa Claus keep himself motivated? He has one big deadline once a year. For 364 days of the year, he really doesn't have much to do."

OK, seriously, like most people, I've been having a hard time getting out of bed, especially now that it's dark out when the alarm goes off. And the first thing that goes through my head is "Ugh, another day, just like the last one." But today I made a quick list of things I needed/wanted to get done for the day, and I actually felt motivated to get out of bed and go to work. Of course, I'm now working on my blog, but I've still got an agenda for the day.

The list for the day is pretty simple (hey, I though it up at 5:45 this morning, cut me some slack):

• Configure CruiseControl to do something useful
• Find my best three job postings and send resumes to them
• Write up a couple business ideas (things to do if I get tired of programming)

It definitely makes it easy to get out of bed when you've got something to do, something new to learn, something new to try. Hope it helps you as well.

Is Your Company In Trouble?

Obviously, I'm going to look at this from a software development perspective, but it will include some general business observations (10 years of work experience gives you some business sense). Without espousing a particular methodology (although I'm sure I've made it clear what I support), ask yourself the following questions:

• Does this Company offer a challenge that's innovative and interesting?
• Do they offer easy access to innovative and interesting challenges (how easy is it to work on something that interests me)?
• How would a new idea be received? With questions like "How do we budget for it?" or "How can we use that to save money?"
• Is the Company worried about meeting estimates, rather than providing functionality?
• What's the Meeting/Time Quotient? Do you have to constantly attend meetings and provide status, or can you get your work done with few interruptions?
• How is the office environment? Are you provided with just what you need to get the job done, or do you have an office that you'd like to show people?
• Is their business model currently or potentially threatened by other Companies? Are they doing anything to become/remain the industry leader? How open are they to new ideas to help the company?
  
• What is the company attitude about new software? Can you try it out and see if it helps your situation, or do you need approval to try it?
• How long does it take to "do something"? How many steps in how many systems involving how many people does it take to report a bug/checkout/fix/build/deploy/test/check in/close the bug? If any of those numbers is large, what is preventing the system from being optimized?