Another weekend and no podcast
Published by on October 10th, 2005
Life is a little frustrating right now. The problem surrounds a web development project which had been scheduled to end in August, is overrunning and eating into time allocated now for other projects. This means long hours, seven days a week, just to clear a few paces ahead.
I conquered two major development hurdles over the weekend, nothing truly remarkable in that as such - development is pretty much all about discovering challenges and overcoming them - but it is how I came to the solutions that was the surprise.
Saturday was frustrating - the solutions did not come. The challenges have arisen from my client’s client having too long to think and experiencing those “now wouldn’t it be great if…” moments. So changes to the application’s business rules this late in the day can have significant effects and bring development to a grinding halt. Which it did for a couple of weeks.
But the solution came to me late Saturday night after an exercise I think I will add to my brainstorming process in the future…
Two hours on Saturday evening was spent writing a long and detailed report to my client about how their requirement will have a negative effect on development, why it is very difficult to achieve at this late stage and justifying previous decisions to take the application code design down a particular route - I left out my feelings about them moving the goal-posts at this late stage. The client is not tech-savvy, so the language had to be straightforward and easy to understand by someone with little idea about how a relational database operates.
I was sleepy when I completed the report and felt a read-through in the morning might be prudent before mailing it off. At around 3 am Sunday morning, my subconscious woke me with a start and the solution to both development problems!
Once the solution was conceived, implementation was relatively easy - if time consuming - so I awoke this morning with my biggest current work headache in the bag. Sweet.
It seems the process of analysing and, most importantly describing, the problem down to the level of your average non-techie person, helped me fully absorb and think more clearly through all aspects and help me form a solution. I will use that technique in the future.
