How To Incorrectly Track The Progress Of A Project
The next time a manager asks you the percentage progress of a task, make sure you reply with a float rounded to 2 decimal places, and say it with full confidence.
Sometime in mid 2000s, the manager of a project I was working on had to take an emergency leave, so another manager filled in for him. It was an agile project, but somehow this other manager managed to come up with a magical Gantt chart for the rest of the project. The project was waterfalled!
The task in question was titled “Create HTML”, a bucket task to dump all UI related tasks from the look of it. Unfortunately I didn’t have the guts to answer with 83.62% back then, and I replied with a magical whole number divisible by 10 instead.
I know that there are still people believing in waterfall methodology to this day (yes, in 2013, believe it or not), and if it works for them, good on them. But whatever the methodology is, asking for a percentage is not going to give you the right idea of how the project is actually progressing.
It makes a good practice for generating magic numbers in your head though :).
The Difference Between Dev And Ops
You can tell whether someone is an ops or a dev from the way he/she stops a program…
Code To Relax
The hours are much less compared to ten years ago, but coding after work is still the best way to unwind and relax.
I started reading GPF Comics when I just started working the IT industry in 2001. The above strip has always been my favourite, geeks on coding as a hobby :).
GPF Comics website still keeps its retro design from the late 90s.
The Wrong Way To Ask For Help On The Mailing List
... and some people wonder why they're ignored.
Update: I guess the message from the above drawing is not obvious to some readers (I’m such a bad ‘illustrator’ :p), so I’ll try to explain it a bit more…
I’ve been following various open source projects’ mailing list these past 5 years, and from time to time, there’s always some people who send an email with a few short sentences (often in capitals, with lots of typos)… asking for HELP!!!, stating that something doesn’t work, and that it’s an urgent issue.
They need to remember that…
- most people volunteer to participate in those projects, i.e. it’s not their paid job.
- asking for help is ok, asking for HELP!!! is less ok.
- notifying the list that something doesn’t work is not good if you don’t accompany it with more information on what you did, how did you come up with the conclusion, or what sort of investigation you had done.
- if it’s urgent for you, it’s not always urgent for other people. most people won’t suddenly stop whatever they’re doing just to assist your urgent problem.
Mailing list etiquette. How to ask questions the smart way.