Some Boring Statements

[swatts]

Hello Fellow Curmudgeons,

I got some rare praise from my project manager the other day. I'm British, so it pains me to even mention it.

" I hope we get to work together for a lot longer as, as a PM – you are very reliable."

And that is all I aspire to be professionally, in a world of people being "driven" and "growth focussed" I mainly aim to deliver what I promised, close to when I promised it..... which is a bit boring.

When we first penned our book, we wanted to call it a "A Pragmatic Approach to LabVIEW Design" and the emphasis was on making the software design process predictable ... we were told this was a boring thing to focus on.

We now live in a world where the tech-bros are coming for our jobs, where AI is going to "solve" software design. Where great profits are made selling shares sold on impossible promises for delivery in a rolling 2 year timeframe.

The heads of these Tech companies, who I'll wager have never had to really concentrate on something for more than a minute think what we do is soooo easy that we can be replaced by a statistical likelihood engine..

I'm going to tell some more boring things.....

Experience is Useful

The best chance you have for project success is to have people in your project who have a history of project success. It's not an accident, it's discipline.

(Construx do a very good video that touches on this a bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrGysps4S1g ).

Do you see what is missing here? Methodology, Language, Paradigm, Process... Often your MBA business manager will think that all those things guarantee success, fill a team with clever, but inexperienced people and are horrified about the disaster that unfolds...

Experience brings an understanding of Methodology, Language, Paradigm, Process, but in a holistic way, experience also lends a voice to that understanding. If I say I've run 300 projects and I know this won't work, people listen.

That doesn't mean inexperienced people are bad at their job, they are just inexperienced and deserve the chance to make mistakes that are not mission critical.

A healthy project team has a mixture of skills and experience.

Discipline is Essential

Tackle all the things that could possibly hold the project up as early as possible. This takes some real discipline as all the fun jobs need doing too!

Train yourself to enjoy the difficult things, they are often the most satisfying and give the most growth opportunities.

Don't understand something - STOP! do not move on until you do understand it.

Fault-finding is not guessing! Understand the problem, recreate the problem, analyse it and only then try and  fix it.

You become a better programmer through pure brute-force making lots of things, removal of designer pride, understanding what will make you better. Rinse and repeat.

Learning is Forever

I held my career back for years because I resisted learning databases, thinking they were for "proper" software engineers. Sounds even more stupid looking at it in a sentence. 

As I get older I want to learn EVERYTHING, from EVERYONE. I absolutely don't care if I have gaps in my knowledge, learning new things is the fun of the job for me. Which is bizarre as I'm quite difficult to teach!.

But have a strategy, mine is simple.. what are the kind of things I want to make and what will help me make them. This has changed from a more monetary strategy, I'm guessing that's age and comfort.

I don't class asking ChatGPT, cutting and pasting from stack overflow or using black-box libraries as good learning. It should involve effort.

Visibility is Important

Project Managers/Customers should know where you are at in a project, it's stressful to not be truthful.

Break everything you do into understandable (demonstratable) deliverables that make a point in the project clear. Hit that deliverable and everyone knows where you are. Maybe you'll need to adjust things to reach the next stage successfully for the next milestone, make it clear what will need doing. At SSDC we have a Project Plan that describes how a project will run, this is living document and should be updated as the project progresses.

In short, you don't really want to be springing surprises on your customer. They will not appreciate it..

Which is all a bit predictable and boring

Lots of Love