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I work at a software company where most of the people are afraid to install new tools to increase productivity. They give me excuses like:
I don't need to install something else.
I can do this myself.
etc...many other baseless arguments.
In an ecommerece business, the end-users should not have to install anything, everything should be managed by them from the web, and the developers should be the ones installing things to increase productivity and teamwork i.e.:
Version Control Systems
Build Tools (ANT, NANT, Maven, continuous integration, CSS Frameworks)
Integrated Development Environments
Frameworks (Unit testing, etc)
Etc...
How else can I get my point across without sound crass?
Your point of persuasion depends on your position in the company. If you're the newly installed manager of the programming team, get your budget approved and start implementing.
If you're a team lead, then start by picking whatever's most painful and asking for the resources to resolve for at least your team. 2 or 3 months in, show your boss tangible improvements, let them buy in from that perspective and push down to the other teams. Rinse, repeat with next pain point. It may take you a year or more, but just like with iterative development, so must changes to environment (esp. when you're not in direct charge) must be iterative and just practicing what you preach is most powerful influential force when you excel while the others flounder.
If you're not on version control, that's the most critical to get implemented the soonest.
The order I typically implement is:
version control (git, subversion)
bug tracking (trac)
morning scrum meetings
new feature tracking, documenting, and estimating tools (pivotal tracking, mingle)
testing frameworks
continuous builds
I would position every tool in terms of how much time/money/... does the tool save. What does it mean to use it and what does it mean not to use it.
Emphasise the negative impact on their work if not using the tools.
When you're trying to convince management of something, give advantages AND disadvantages. Try to stay objective, and give figures where possible. This will help you convince management (and indeed yourself). It gives management (and your team) confidence if they know you've actually thought something through.
For instance, I worked at a place, and we were looking at improving the speed of the ANT build. It was 8 minutes. I changed it a bit, and it was 3 minutes afterwards. Was it worth it?
We had 8 developers. Lets say they do 3 builds a day.
That is 8 developers * 3 builds per day * 200 days a year = 24000 minutes = about 50 man days.
That is, for a team of 8, if you save them 15 minutes a day, you'll get an extra two man months work from the team each year.
This not only helps you convince people/managers of the worth of what you're doing, but also helps you convince yourself.
P.S. About 6 months previously, we didn't have ANT, and the build was a series of 12 .bat files which had to be run in order. It tooks about 2 hours to correctly build. THAT change was easier to sell to the management.
My two pence of advice - if you need to persuade anyone in management or business for use of something new or different, you need to tell them that it result in increased income (due to the benefits like productivity gains or hours of business manual effort saved etc).
But certainly, in today's environment its really sad to hear that the working population or devs in your organisation are not enthusiastic to try and use new tools/tech. You should also try putting your case with your head of technology - I am sure they will take it seriously.
I'll play the devil's advocate for a minute, and say that sometimes, installing the latest shiniest tool probably isn't the best solution.
Eg:
when you're just about to release a product, and can't afford to spend time fixing your configuration if something breaks, or just learning to make it work the way it used to.
when you know your IDE really well, you've configured it perfectly, and it's still doing everything you need. (I'm thinking of die-hard vi and emacs users here)
when you see your collegues spending more time managing/upgrading/fixing their tools then actually producing results
when the tools are immature/unstable/unsupported
...
That said, there's no excuse for not using version control.
A key point is how well can you rationalize away someone's excuse? If someone says they don't need it, that is correct. However, there may be benefits gained from using the tool but there also has to be guidance, understanding and someone prepared to endure the pain of learning to use the tool. This is where I'd suggest understanding that someone may be afraid of wanting to try something new or not see the benefits from it. Is it so hard to see that someone else may have feelings that are driving what they are saying?
While you may see the argument as baseless, try to see things from their perspective. If they have never done unit tests before, how are they supposed to know why they are good? Same can apply to build tools and other areas of things that others may view as basic if they have had them for years and years.
Seems to me as if you had a lot of Morts in your company. A very sad situation.
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I have a few software developers working for my projects and I would like to provide them a way to register time they spent on real development.
There is good will to register development hours, no force, but we try to avoid techniques like excel sheets register because this is so uncomfortable.
I can track svn commits, but this is unreliable. Developers also helps supporting different projects during the day, so assuming they work on one project by whole day is not true.
I've seen utilities that popups a message every hour to confirm the project you're working on but this is annoying.
Some kind of active-window-title-anaylzer might help (you can get solution name from there in the case of Visual Studio) but I have no experience with such idea.
If you have any experience with programmers/designers work hours registration, please share with me.
Thanks
Its a good question, and the very best way you can measure hours spent on a development project is not to measure hours spent at all.
You say there is good will to register hours, but I have my doubts. Realistically, from a developers point of view, excessive time management is a distraction for most (perhaps ALL developers on the planet).
I can understand why time is measured so excessively on ODesk. There is a good reason for this, because project time is paid up front by the client to ODesk, and the developer needs to prove to ODesk hours worked. Payment is also guaranteed, and its unlikely oDesk providers and developers ever meet in real life, so there is no trust.
Since its unlikely you're paying your developers upfront, and its more likely you have better trust established, you need to perhaps switch your attention from a management strategy that's cludgy and annoying, to something way more useful.
Yes ladies and gentleman I am talking about Scrum. Throw any notion of keeping hour per hour tabs of your developers out the window (they'll love you for it). And instead introduce Scrum Management into the scenario.
Create some sprints (milestones) for your product development, and in that have a list of iterations (batched deliverable s), try keep your iterations down to a weekly period.
Create a product backlog, and make sure you're aware who exactly is working on what. Find someone on the team to act as a scrum master on your behalf, or to take on this responsibility yourself. Make sure you have daily feedback meetings, keep them short and focused, to identify any risks that might get in the way of deliverable s. Let the developers more or less drive the timing process, and get realistic estimates for tasks.
Read a book or 2 on scrum, and get others and team members involved in the learning curve. Tweak the base scrum methodology to best suit your particular style of management, and I assure you, you will have a very happy team.
Measure your time in man days, and try avoid getting on the back of a developer for hour by hour progress...
There're various time tracking software tools as you have probably already seen from doing google searches. But in all honestly you are asking for the Holy Grail of time tracking. For example do you consider a developer staring at her code and thinking as development time? She might stare at the screen for 1 hour and only type for 10 minutes. In this case it looks like they don't work much when really they worked for 1 hour and 10 minutes. I don't mean to say what you asking for isn't a valid thing to want it just seems to be one of those problems that doesn't have a perfect solution.
Good luck.
I think you're asking the wrong question and are headed for a slippery slope. There's so much that goes into development that has nothing to do with actually coding.
I think a better solution if you're deadset on tracking something is to track the time spent on activities NOT related to development. Of course there's some grey area there too. For example, a meeting to discuss user requirements should probably be counted towards development even though no coding will get done.
you need something like this dashboard to measure time on task. The only way to know the real software developer time is to have then track it. That way when they switch tasks they stop the clock so to speak. I think the hardest thing would be getting the developers to use it as a measure of how long they work on a certain project or even code module, etc. If you can then use those metrics to reduce distractions and other time sucks, you might at least be able to get a decent swag about how much time they spend coding versus email versus talking to other developers, etc.
If you're trying to measure what the developer has as their active window, you have to assume goodwill, because any decent developer can sneak around that if you're trying to turn the screws on them. I spend about a third of my "development time" in Firefox looking at references, for example.
Maybe ask the developers just to keep a log, so you know where their time is going? Whereas that's not ideal, you're never going to do much better than that.
If you are trying to measure the time spent on distractions and disturbances and other task, would it not be in your developers interest to give you this information willingly?
You said somewhere that you are implementing scrum.
If you really have to either take it up at the daily scrum, making it a part of the ritual, or add a very short daily meeting at the end of the day. Let the developers guesstimate how much of the day was spent on distractions and disturbances and other tasks. To me that feels like it will be as close to "correct" as any other way of measuring, considering the difficulties involved.
So, instead of having the developers note down the time, make it the scrummaster's job to sum it up, and make this as painless as possible for the devs. Make sure that the developers gain something tangible from doing it as well, otherwise it is going to end up on the impediment list awfully quickly.
As Dean J implied, you have to trust the developers anyway.
it depends on your IDE - if you are using Eclipse then I recommend using Mylyn plugin. You can measure the time spent on each task. Tasks can be fetched from every famous task repositories i.e. Tuleap. details here
User only need to put the task in Active mode - and deactivate when task is finished to able to stop the timer. I think Mylyn will support such process - if a status of a task changes then this would trigger the active mode (if closed then deactivate the task)
Sometimes development involve using a browser, or a terminal. Eclipse can be used as a browser and as a terminal as well - so developer does not need to leave Eclipse - so almost every activity can be measured related to a task.
Try DotProject or XPlanner
An active window analyzer won't give you reliable results, because your developers will swap between programs (Outlook, File Explorer, version control, internet browser, etc.). Your proposed analyzer won't log that time, although it will very likely be part of the development time that the developer puts into the project (software development is not just coding in VS all the time).
Trying to measure a developer's work hours is the wrong notion. A proper question to ask is what is a programmer's effectiveness. That can't be measured by coding time, time spent sitting in front of a computer, or the like.
As Joel Spolsky put it well in a blog on software craftsmanship, software development "...is not a manufacturing process."
A related but somewhat different discussion appears in this SO article on an invasive programmer productivity measurement tool.
I definitely would not recommend you to use any time measuring software where the developer is forced. It is a massive distraction to developers' concentration.
Instead, the following simple techniques can be used:
Spreadsheet: For smaller projects or team of developers
There's probably nothing easier than to create and share a spreadsheet online, add project tasks to it, assign tasks to a developer, let the developers estimate hours for theirs tasks, let them update their task status(es) (very rough value between 0% and 100%) as they want, let them specify time (hours) it really took to complete the task.
So in the spreadsheet you may have columns:
task name, assigned to, estimated hours, real hours, done (%)
Google Drive spreadsheet may be the answer.
This is a very simple and fast method which distracts developer(s) minimally.
Scrum: For medium to large projects or team of developers
Tasks and the Scrum information are recorded and kept on a board in the office and/or a special Scrum application can be used. A good web Scrum application is Pivotal Tracker which I would recommend for any size of project or team.
More about Scrum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)
In both cases, the product owners (clients or those who deal with clients), project managers and all developers can better and faster:
communicate
estimate
see progress of the team and all individuals involved
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Hey all. I would like to get some insight on a question that I have been trying to find some information about. If you are the solo developer that is building a project from ground up, how do you manage the project? In the past, I have worked on a few personal projects that have grown into fairly large projects. In almost all of those projects, I have tried to wear the hats of all the roles that would normally be in place during a normal software development project (i.e. Product Owner, developer, architect, tester, etc.). It seems that when I leave the project for some time and come back, it is extremely hard to get back into the rhythm of what I was doing. So with that, I have some questions:
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways? If so, how do I go about
doing this, and how do I manage these
requirements? Product backlog,
features list, etc?
If this is the case, are full blown product backlogs or use cases a little overkill?
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow? Start coding
immediately, write down user
stories/use cases, then go into
OOA/D?
What diagramming/modeling would be sufficient for this level? Domain model, class diagram, etc?
Basically, I was curious how everyone out there in the SO community would go about developing a project from inception to deployment when you are the lone, solo developer. What steps, documentation, and other project related activities are needed to help bring this project from an impractical, hobby project to something more professional? Any help, references, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
The most difficult part, I have found, about developing solo is that it's just tough to keep yourself driving forward. Even if you're doing this to make a living (AKA, running your own software business), unless you have pressing needs (AKA, you're going to starve if you don't make money) it can be difficult to sit down and just code.
From your perspective, I would recommend following good software practices where it makes sense to. For example, if I were a solo software developer, I would have no reason to create a collaborative development environment. All I really need is an SVN server, my IDE, and a place to record documentation (might setup a wiki or a website or something). I would personally create a realistic schedule to follow and would work on sticking to that.
As for level of effort of documentation, that really depends on you and the product you are developing. For example, I would definitely recommend recording your requirements. Unless your product is trivial, there is no way you'll remember them all and why you wanted certain ones over others. Managing a full backlog, however, can be a job in and of itself. In the solo programmer case this may not make sense.
Basically, the point I'm trying to get across (and should be followed with every project - not just in this case) is have just enough management that makes sense. The rest should be focused on the work and the development of the product.
Something else you may want to look into is reading this - Agile Programming Works for the Solo Developer. There are other, similar, articles out there. Might give you some good thoughts.
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways? If so, how do I go about
doing this, and how do I manage these
requirements? Product backlog,
features list, etc?
I have two lists of features:
A high-level view which states the scope of the finished product
A list of the features which I'm implementing in this iteration
Because I don't need to communicate it to other people (yet) I tend to write down the things that I don't know about the project (if I already know it there's no need to write it down): it's when it gets too complicated, or when there are details which I haven't defined but need to define, that I start to define them in writing.
I did however try to investigate/make a business-case for the project before starting coding.
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
I did non-programmer, product-owner thinking at times when I had to be away from the computer anyway.
Apart from that, my cycle is:
Implement more functionality
Integration-test it
[repeat as above]
Every 3 to 6 months I compare the new-functionality-accomplished against my estimated schedule, and then recalibrate: i.e., make a new list of the highest-priority features to implement in the next few months.
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow? Start coding
immediately, write down user
stories/use cases, then go into OOA/D?
I started with working part-time or in my spare time, to make sure that I had:
Understood the required functionality
Made significant architectural decisions
Written any throw-away prototypes as necessary to learn new technology
After that I was ready to start developing full-time.
What diagramming/modeling would be sufficient for this level? Domain model, class diagram, etc?
I'm not using diagrams at all (except for sketches of the UI). By structuring the code, and refactoring, I'm able to know/remember/rediscover/decide which software components implement what functionality.
It seems that when I leave the project
for some time and come back, it is
extremely hard to get back into the
rhythm of what I was doing.
You need to comment your code more. If you leave the code, come back in two weeks, and can't remember how the code works, you need more comments.
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways?
Yes, for the same reasons stated above.
how do I manage these requirements?
A feature list is OK, provided you have enough detail in each feature to jog your memory.
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
Break down each feature into smaller and smaller tasks, until you feel like you can do each task in a half day or less.
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow?
That depends on your development style. In general I would follow a clear but simple architecture, avail yourself of software patterns where practical, and provide adequate unit tests for your code as you go.
What diagramming/modeling would be
sufficient for this level?
Sufficient diagramming/modeling to make the project clear in your head.
What steps, documentation, and other
project related activities are needed
to help bring this project from an
impractical, hobby project to
something more professional?
Other than what I have already mentioned, make sure you have a good source control system and daily backups in place.
Good luck!
If you believe there is a chance that you're going to work on the project for some amount of time, leave it, and then come back to it at a later date...your best bet is to treat the documentation for the project the same as if you were working with a large team.
That means documenting requirements (even if they're from yourself), writing use cases (if functionality is going to be complex, otherwise some other form of documentation could suffice), and some level of UML diagraming (or other domain specific diagram) which could include activity diagrams/class diagrams/etc.
That way, when you leave the project for some amount of time, you can come back to a well documented idea and pick up where you left off.
As a side note, I try to do the majority of those things no matter what...that way if I ever find somebody interested in working on the project with me, I can get them up to speed quickly and get them on board with my ideas.
This is how I work, YMMV:
Keep a spreadsheet for high level of everything - list of your projects, and some top-level items/todos/reminders
Create a "project" folder for each product/project you have or work on, and create a strucuture to contain documentation and code for the project.
Keep a top-level "catch-all" document for each project, in the root of this folder. Keep you ideas, research, notes etc in this doc.
Then if you want to get organized, keep an MS project file (or similar) and plot out timelines for the various steps in each project. This is good for tracking progress on each project and make sure you arent forgetting anything. Basically keeps you honest with yourself.
And if you need to track progress on project work you are doing for clients, I understand Basecamp is a good solution for this. I am currently evaluating it for my own company. See www.basecamphq.com
Even as a solo developer, you should document at least the overall features of your project, and then the requirements for the particular feature you are working to complete, and then maybe produce a short pseudo-code for the functionality you're currently working on.
That way, if you do end up breaking away from that project, you can get back to it and see where you're up to easily enough. It's also pointless getting too far ahead of yourself with details for this same reason.
It's also a neat motivational tool for a solo developer - getting through and ticking things off is a way to show progress - something that you can start to feel you're not making when you're chewing through a couple of thousand lines of code and it seems like you're still miles away from actually having 'module x' completed.
Lastly - with regards to code comments - I at least try and fill out what actions/behaviour a new function should have in an outline, and then write the code in between the comments. Also, it is useful having plain English explanations of why you're branching in an if/else to support the logic in the condition...
I belive that better results in solo development one can achive with appropriate tools support and tasks that compensate lack of ohers people and help to organize working time. Any tool that generate metada with minimal create time cost describing your software is helpful.
VCS and tools for tracking user actity/code changes history - very important is to add good commit messages
mind-mapping tools for storing project related data (e.g. XMind), blacboard is useful too :)
time tracking tools (e.g. Toggl.com)
write a lot of acceptance test and use acceptance testing frameworks
Of course these clues also fits in non solo development :)
As a lone developer, I've found that your time is very expensive. This means that you have to balance sustainability and momentum - even though you are just one guy, you have to do things so that the you six months from now can go back and look at old stuff without wasting time, without spending so much time maintaining the systems that it compromises your flow.
Your question suggests that you are thinking in terms of fairly heavyweight tools and processes, but the 80/20 rule applies - for example, you can nail documentation well enough by TDD, using the doc tools of your platform to generate API docs, plus a Wiki for specs, lists, etc.
In that vein, I would suggest that you choose your platform carefully. The question about modelling suggests that you are using a platform that produce a lot of code and artifacts, but you may be able to get most of the functionality for much less management overhead elsewhere. Today I'm working on a .NET Web app that I wrote "the right way", but now realize that I could have delivered the same functionality much more efficiently in this case by using PHP with a PHP MVC framework to keep a clean structure.
Specific tools that I'd recommend:
A distributed version control system (much less overhead than centralized)
The most lightweight platform that you can use that has good tooling
A Wiki to easily capture and maintain small and large bits of content
Whatever testing framework that you can use, right from the start of the project
A lightweight TODO list system that you can access from anywhere
I used to work on a very small team (one dba and one C# developer). Even then I found it very useful to have written requirements, formal tests, source control and bug tracking (we used bug tracking for our features as well as bugs). It helped us to not forget anything and a year later when you were doing maintenance, you had something to research though to help you undersatnd what you did. Plus when the two of us left (as most people eventually move on) there was documentation there for the next person.
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Skunk Works Project: A project carried out by one part of a company without the knowledge of the remainder of the company.
Looking for stories about any skunk works projects you've worked on or initiated:
Was it successful?
Were you found out?
Were you punished or rewarded?
How did you fund it?
How did you staff it?
How long did it take to finish, compared to above-ground projects?
What was the cost, compared to above-ground projects?
Was it formally adopted?
Excellent question. Very important question.
Geoffrey Moore (Inside the Tornado, Crossing the Chasm, etc.) has written that, as he lectured around the world, he had one question he would ask every client (including those like GE, Motorola, etc.)
The question was:
"Can you give me even one example of a truly ground-breaking, paradigm shifting innovation that has ever come out of your company's research or product development process?"
At least at the point where I read the quote, not one example had been identified. And in most cases, such products or services had been conceived, designed, and largely developed by small groups of people who at best were ignored, but were often actively opposed by R&D.
Not sure if this qualifies as a "skunk works" project, but here's a great story from This American Life. It's Act Two of this March 2005 episode.
Amy O'Leary tells the story of a
software writer at Apple Computer
whose job contract ends, but he
refuses to go away. He continues to
show up at work every day, sneaking in
the front door, hiding out in empty
offices, and putting in long hours on
a project the company cancelled. There
were no meetings, no office politics,
no managers interfering with his work.
Soon, he had written a perfect piece
of software. His final problem is
figuring out how to secretly install
it in Apple's new computers without
anyone noticing. (12 minutes)
Great listening for anyone, but especially programmers in this case.
I have actually done a number of these "Secret" project type situations. Were they are not fully supported when started, and kept very secret. I'll discuss on of these along the lines of your questions.
Was it successful?
Yes, the system developed was put into place 3 years ago, and has been functioning ever since.
Were you found out?
Yes, it was discovered, and it was part of the overall plan.
Were you punished or rewarded?
With a working prototype we were rewarded, given the extra resources needed, and eventually the system was put into place for the entire company to use.
How did you fund it?
It was a development activity that was simply completed in down-time and personal time by various people.
How did you staff it?
See the above.
How long did it take to finish, compared to above-ground projects?
We did the entire thing in about 4 months, with dedicated resources a single person could have done it in about 2 months, or a team in about 3-4 weeks.
What was the cost compared to above-ground projects?
No cost, using down-time that was already "wasted" to be put to effective use. All existing infrastructure for the final incarnation was already there.
Was it formally adopted?
Yes, it is a solid part of the business plan now, and has been for over 3 years.
We are currently in this situation, although, admittedly, the project will not have high visibility aspects - even though everyone will be eventually using it.
As part of a preparation to rebuild most of our enterprise applications, we have started developing an application framework that will be the basis for all of the replacement applications. We already have "bench projects" and "proof of concept" time that everyone is aware that we use to evaluate concepts. How it is different this time, though, is that we are actively developing a full project.
Was it successful? - We have not rolled out the full framework yet, but since it is modular, have been rolling out pieces in the legacy applications. Most of these are focused on stability and reporting/logging concerns. So far, they have exceeded expectations, allowing us to react to issues more rapidly, as well as eliminating some previously recurring ones.
Were you found out? - Well, this project has become one of the worst kept secrets I have ever seen. While there are quite a few people who have heard the name of the project thrown around a bit, I don't think anyone outside of a few of my developers and the testing team really know what it is about.
Were you punished or rewarded? - We haven't considered either side of this, yet. Unless the framework would cause negative effects, I doubt we would be punished for it. However, even if it is a success, the reward will be that no one notices anything other than improved applications.
How did you fund it? - Like mentioned before, bench time between other projects and inclusion in "proof of concept" work. I have also been putting some of my own personal time into it on my commute, since it will lay the groundwork for how all of my developers interact with the applications in the future.
How did you staff it? - I started with a series of small proof of concepts within the legacy codebase as part of "maintaining" the applications. Going in and fixing a defect often involved analytical steps on what could be done to prevent things from happening or improve the experience in the future. These were eventually extracted and refactored in their own assemblies, which became the beginning of the framework. We are now placing "covert" projects into our iterations that help flesh out these ideas through my developers, and we are now extracting and refactoring their efforts based upon the success of the implementation.
How long did it take to finish, compared to above-ground projects? - Yet to be determined. Since this is not an official project, so far it has really cost nothing. Bench time and "proof of concept" work is standard inclusion. The fact that we are essentially creating something from this time instead of throwing it away is gravy.
What was the cost, compared to above-ground projects? - Once again, yet to be determined. I imagine that the up-front cost will be relatively small compared to larger projects. Considering that this is a framework to contain commonly used extensions and improve the ability and quality of the developer to work efficiently, it will probably pay for itself before it is finished due to time-saving, improved practices, and reduction in defects.
Was it formally adopted? - The developers have embraced the concept. My immediate management is chomping at the bit. My management peers are excited, if not a little confused on what it will do. The measurement will be the success of the applications that are built off of the framework - which is some ways away still.
I built a tool to validate schema changes to the target DB at work. prior to my tool we did it all by hand with fugly scripts that DBA's at client sites had to run. my tool started tracking the structure of the database to know if certain things would work out. I got frustrated with having to hand check all this stuff or suffer from the errors inevtiable in doing things by hand so I built my validator and here is its story...
Was it successful?
Yes
Were you found out?
yes. Part of the aspect of a skunk works project is that it has to surface eventually.
Were you punished or rewarded?
Punished initially - why not work on mainstream activities. But rewarded once the benefit was made evident and product errors were reduced. Then it was heralded- everyone loves a winner.
How did you fund it?
For the love of coding it up and making my life easier - so no direct funds needed. Unless was part of managements plan to have a secret project i cannot see how this would be otherwise.
How did you staff it?
I coded alone as a lone developer on a grassy knoll with my laptop.
How long did it take to finish, compared to above-ground projects?
Not comparable. my skunksworks effort was maybe a year of tinkering. If we had set out to do it directly i cant imagine it would have taken less than 2 months directly but I do not know since thats not how it morphed. Downtime to think and plan may have made it faster in the end compared direct planning upfront.
What was the cost, compared to above-ground projects?
Undetermined - As I mentioned, given that I had down time to think and plan it was able to evovle in the direction I wanted without schedule/result pressures. In a shorter or more resource involved project we probably would have made some mistakes in rushin to get to some M1, M2 etc. Besides if it didnt work out, its would have been as if it had never happened as I could have folded up the tents and gone quietly into the night.
Was it formally adopted?
My project is a key part of the product build at my work so I would say its entrenched.
Hmm... I did one of these today actually.
We've got no real backup system in place. At present I get the highly enjoyable task of backing up 100GB of SVN repositories using svn hotcopy and .tar.gz files, while trying to juggle them across two or three NFS shares with limited disk space to get to the server with the backup disk. That's in the best case - i.e. when I can be bothered to babysit the process for 2 hours.
Since that's bound to end in catastrophe sooner or later I did a git svn clone on the largest one straight onto the backup server, then cloned that to my own machine and kicked out the svn working copy I was using. I've gained about 1GB of free space on my machine, given the most important backups some redundancy, and reduced a 15 minute svn st to a 30 second git status. And will I get complained at for it? Probably...
Generally the answers here have been success stories, so I thought I'd share my recent experience sitting just outside such a project that did not go so well.
How did you fund it?
How did you staff it?
The project started when my manager identified a potential employee, lets call him Fred, who had a pet project in our field. We don't pay well, and they they agreed that Fred would be hired and would work almost full time on the project, which they would eventually introduce to the business.
So Fred's started work on the project, known only to Fred's team but not to management or other parts of the business. Fred is a developer, and the work was more-or-less pure development, plus contributions to an underlying open-source project.
Was it successful?
Not really. Fred was working on it alone, and I think would have spent 12-18 months on it. Progress reports to the team consisted of describing whatever bug he was fixing that week. Occasional attempts were made to interest one or two higher-ups in the organization, but they never really went anywhere. Fred was supposed to put together a plan to finish and roll out the project so it could be introduced to the organization, but there always seemed to be some reason it was never done.
Were you found out?
Word slowly filtered out as Fred an the manager tried to interest more people in what they were doing.
Eventually we got restructured, and our new director wanted to know what everyone was working on, and the project was revealed to him. However, it was apparently not explained very well, since the new director wound up asking me (and others in our team I am sure) what exactly Fred's project was?
Were you punished or rewarded?
Eventually the new director froze all funding for the project and Fred was reassigned to work on other projects. That's the current status as far as I know.
How long did it take to finish, compared to above-ground projects?
Was it formally adopted?
It was not finished and it was not adopted.
What was the cost, compared to above-ground projects?
The ostensible cost was Fred's time.
However, there were other costs.
First, Fred and his project became a it of a joke in our team, and later in the teams we work with. What was he doing? Why was he doing it? Why was there no progress? Fred's reputation suffered. "Fred's project" became an in-joke for a project that was going nowhere.
Second, the eventual revelation of such a long-running but hidden project reflected poorly on our manager, and by extension on our whole team.
Third, resentment grew. Why was this guy working on his pet project when there was so much real work to be done? We are a small but busy team and we could have used a developer on any number of other projects.
In the end, I think this project has had consequences for our team's standing and dynamic. I occasionally talk it over with team members, when we're away from the office. Initially (and at the time) we were very critical of Fred, who can be an irritating guy, and who does not take criticism well, and who promised something he couldn't deliver. More recently, we've been critical of our boss. This was not a good way to run a project, and it was obvious from very early on that Fred did not have the skillset to do this work on his own and he would not seek or take advice. It was unfair to Fred that he was put in that position and left in it for so long. Lately I have wondered if I should have raised my concerns more forcefully. Though we did push Fred and our manager on what the project was and where it was going, we did not take it any further than our team. Having said that, I cannot imagine a good outcome even if we had.
Finally, I'd like to say that Fred is a smart guy and the project was not a bad one. It could have been successful (some parts have since come out in competing projects -- inferior competitors that actually delivered).
If this project had been done above board, and Fred had been working with a decent project manager and had a good communicator on the team, it could well have found a champion and delivered something great. Either that or it could have been killed a lot sooner.
I did one of these. It's actually how I ended up programming.
I was responsible for maintaining a legacy, er... "database". I won't go into gory details but it was the usual evil application. The company pretty much ran on it, it would sometimes go down for days. At the time the IS director (a friend) was actively looking for replacements, talking to large consulting organizations, etc.etc. but management was committted/emotionally invested in the existing system. I volunteered (to the IS director) to try to rewrite is (well, more like he asked if anyone was interested in trying to deal with this mess and I volunteered because I was bored). We had no real programmers on staff, and I'd only written a few small ad-hoc things. I had no idea how little I knew.
Finished the thing in about 8 months or maybe a year (this was a while ago, don't remember exactly).
Was it successful?
yes, worked as advertised.
Were you found out?
It initially started as a sort of super-secret, cloak and dagger thing. Kind of silly in retrospect, but it made it more fun. About halfway through it just started to become more obvious that that was what I was doing, and as it turned out the idea was supported. Writing this thing eventually became my job.
Were you punished or rewarded?
Rewarded
How did you fund it? / How did you staff it?
The success of it was pretty much due to the support of my boss, who made sure I had the time and resources I needed to do it.
Was it formally adopted?
Yes, we eventually ran the company on it.
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I'm the leader of a small web development team, and I have a feeling that we will have a couple telecommuters joining the team pretty soon (either new employees, or existing employees that will begin telecommuting). Any idea how to effectively manage and collaborate with developers working remotely?
Most of the work we do is client-driven. We're doing agile development (or our version of it, anyway), but since it's mostly client work, we can't really assign a feature to a developer and set them lose for a week or two like we might be able to with a desktop app or something like that. The biggest problem we have when people occasionally work from home is collaborating - it's tough to work together without the benefit of a whiteboard and hand-waving.
It seems like software development is perfect for telecommuting, but I haven't been able to find many good resources about the practical aspects of working remotely within a development team. Has anyone else had any experience with this?
I freelance a lot and in doing so work remotely a lot of the time. These are the things that make my life as easy as possible (so might be things you want to "suggest"). I think they're mostly common-sense, but you never know...
[Everyone] Communicate well. When you're having a conversation face-to-face, you can be verbose and explain things in a round-a-bout way. When you're limited to email, IM and phone, all parties need to explain themselves fully but succinctly. I find that summarising long emails into request/action points goes a long way towards getting things done well.
[Everyone] Have a online project tracking space. Most tend to use a ticket system or some description, where action points can be assigned to members. It wouldn't hurt to use this same space for tracking emails and sharing whiteboard ideas. Most online project apps allow for that by default.
[Management] Don't pester devs. If you need something urgently, set the status of the ticket, give them a call and chase them up later on in the day. Half-hourly emails asking "is it done yet?" does more harm than good!
[Management] Make sure messages get passed along. If a dev says "somebody needs to do something", it's your job to make sure the message is passed along to the right person. There are few things more annoying than passing a message to a project manager for them to accidentally sit on it. I don't want to have to chase up things like that because it's, frankly, not what I'm being paid for.
[Management] Make sure people have something to do. If you send them home with nothing on their task list that they can immediately action, they're not going to put in the effort. It's a damned sight harder to keep yourself productive at home than it is in the office when you've little or nothing that you can do. You might have to juggle tasks if there's a blocker.
I work at home full time. Here are things that help in my small (6 people) team.
Set up rules for using IM. For example, allow remote workers to block off time not to be interrupted by email or IM. Require workers to keep status up-to-date somewhere (IM, Yammer, etc) which helps keep them accountable to stay on task. Stay in touch without being a distraction.
Meet in person occasionally if possible. Nothing can replace a face-to-face meeting. Skype is ok for group meetings, but not if whiteboards are involved.
Use SharedView or another screen sharing program for collaborating. Screenshots/screen captures are helpful as well to make sure both parties are on the same page.
"Any idea how to effectively manage and collaborate with developers working remotely?"
What does "effectively" mean? I can be negative and assume it means "with me, the project leader in control of everything". I can be positive and assume you want people to be as effective as possible.
Sometimes, "effective" is management-speak for "under my control". Or it means "not screwing around."
The question, then is "effectively doing what?" Effectively "working" is rather vague. Hence my leap to the dark side of project management. [Which, I admit, is probably wrong. But without specific team productivity problems, the question has no answer.]
"it's tough to work together without the benefit of a whiteboard and hand-waving" This is only sometimes true, there are lots of replacements. The "hand-waving" over the internet happens more slowly and more thoroughly.
The group-think around the whiteboard is fun -- it's a kind of party. However, for some of us, it's not very productive. I need hours to digest and consider and work out alternatives; I'm actually not effective in the group whiteboard environment.
I find it more effective to use the alternative "slow-motion" whiteboard technologies. I like to see a draft pitch for an idea. Comment on it. Refine it. A lot like a Wiki or Stackoverflow. I really like the internet RFC model -- here's my idea; comment on it. When there are no more improvements, that's as good as it's going to get.
I work in Mississippi and my home office is in Michigan. I spend several hours a day pair programming with my team with ease. The tools I use are:
SharedView
Remote Deskop Assistance
Live Meeting
Oovoo
Skype
Depending on who and how many will depend on the tool I use.
"Use the right tool for the job and invest in a damn good headset." - Me.
I've generally used some time of community based software such as a wiki, blog, or forum to handle the documentation areas. We also have a Cisco phone system and use some capabilities of the system. I'd also recommend live meeting or webex to do frequent team meetings. Skype and IM clients such as Live Messenger are also good tools. For the short status updates, twitter does the trick.
Check out the Agile Scrum methodology with VSTS. Scrum forces us to have daily 15 minutes meeting and small mile stones , It makes sure the effective togetherness and tight communication. Make sure you use Task,Bug assignment etc through VSTS
I agree with John Sheehan's response. I am a consultant and manage other consultants - both on a project basis (as PM) and on a client basis across projects. I have worked with developers on a purely remote basis as well as telecommuting (meaning the majority of time we are co-located). Working remotely is a matter of trust and communication. Co-locating is best, but if you work remotely, simply create a culture of frequent communication. IM and phone are great for this, email less so. If you have a less than communicative co-worker, it is up to you as the manager to reach out. Ask for status. Force code-checkin on a frequent basis for review.
[EDIT] - Yes, don't pester and set expectations! Be clear and concise.
First of all use scrum (daily scrum calls, scrum board w/ burndown chart (wikis do a great job there), iteration in sprints etc). Next to that use tools that make it more easy to collaborate remotely like skype and VNC (maybe campfire?) and a wiki. I worked for 2 years on a project w/ people in 3 countries on 2 continents and various time zones and it worked quite well. The key is having tools and methodologies that make it more difficult for people to "hide", so that everything you and your team does is visible.
I find clear communication and staying on task are challenging with virtual teams. I try to use regular scheduled update meetings (over the phone or video conference) with a written agenda to help with these challenges.
At the front on the agenda list the major milestones and the near term milestones. The first item is always "check progress" each team member simply updates us on when they expect to finish the particular tasks involved. We try not to get involved in long stories here. It's simply "what are you going to do and when".
Once the progress check is done deal with any other issues raised in during the last week and any issues the team has that can be sorted out whilst you are in the meeting. Anything let over (such as new issues raised) needs to have the question asked "who is needs to sort this out and when".
Once you set a common format for the meeting you can do this weekly in 30-45 minutes with teams of 5-8 people. Keep it short and sweet so it isn't viewed as an imposition. Keep it focused on actions and schedule so it can be valuable.
I'm currently the PM of a smaller project that has two developers (myself and another developer that works out of the office). We are currently having daily SCRUM meetings, which last for about 15 minutes. We discuss what got done the previous day, what problems were encountered and what I can do to help with these problems, and what will be done tomorrow.
They're pretty quick and seemed to be very helpful.
Using a Time Tracking Software for your remote employees can greatly help you in managing the team.
While hiring a remote employee, you would be concerned about,
The amount of time spent in getting a task done.
The quality of the work done.
Collaboration based on the progress of the project.
The real time progress on a task.
Collaborating to solve bugs and logical errors.
I was in your situation a while ago and then I tried StaffTimerApp and it helped me in the following ways.
A Time Tracking Software gives crystal clear statistics about the time spent on getting a task done. StaffTimerApp captures screenshots and converts them into billable and non-billable hours. Hence, you would know if any time was wasted while getting the work done. You would also know the exact amount of time spent in getting the work done. If you pay your contractor by the hour, this application can help you tremendously.
If you use a time tracking software that captures screenshots, you can look at them to analyse the quality of work that is being delivered. I used this feature and was able to save some tasks from derailing.
A Time Tracking Software lets the employer know how far along the employee is with the task, hence the information extracted by Time Tracking will make collaboration easier. StaffTimerApp proved to be very helpful as I was able to collaborate with the other employees based on this information.
The screen sharing feature equipped me with the power of viewing my employee's laptop screen in real time. This way I would get to know about the progress on a task.
So you need a good Time Tracking Software with great productivity analytics and employee monitoring capabilities to feel comfortable with hiring a remote developer.