Getting Real: Chapter 4

Last term, I saw an old friend, who develop software as well, and invited him for some coffee hoping to get some interesting dirt about my old classmates, but to my surprise, he told me, “Riela, I’m planning to shift. My past project drained all the happiness out of me.” Of course I was shocked because he was one of those reliable students and I felt curious as well to what was that horrifying requirement that made him bend and break like that. So I asked him, “What’s wrong with your last project?” and he answered with a higher tone, “The scope. It’s tough to know when to stop.” Hey! wait a minute! that is not the first time I heard of that and I’m sure it’s definitely not your first time either but let’s forget about the annoyingly emotional friend of mine for a second (because he ended up complaining like crazy ) and consider the reason why I’m telling this story, the reason why we all have problems dealing with scope identification.

As human beings who seek perfection in once profession (cool! It rhymed! ), even though it’s pretty clear that it’s nonexistent, we try to push the limits too much that we forget during the peek of brainstorming what we’re dealing with in the first place. Here’s a piece of advice which may not sound as good as freshly baked pizza, just “Stop and take a chill-pill” because if you don’t, you’ll end up dead and unhappy because of all your failed projects!

The Chapter 4 of Getting Real by the 37signals focused on explaining the importance of setting priorities and paying no mind to too much details in the beginning of the project because, in my point of view, once you want to eat a banana, you peal the skin off, and that’s when you get what you want without doing much but if you suddenly decided you want to see it sliced, diced, and mixed with melted chocolate, that’s when you do more work than usual and that work wasn’t really the point why you have a banana remember? You only want to eat a banana, the idea of beautifying it before eating all of it doesn’t make sense considering that a banana, as is, is what you want. All of those are just extras, or in a more technical term, features. These so-called “features” are the root of the problem in defining the scope of a project. We tend to get carried away with all the possible praises, favors, and promotions we might have once we create this unbelievable software with a bunch of great features without thinking, “Is that what they want?”

Things you should never forget:

• You are human who is capable of making a mistake — and become completely insane with the details!
• See the big picture FIRST then let the details pour in
• Don’t be a prick! Listen to your subordinates because they’re smarter than you are. One of them will take your place soon. Deal with it.
• Seek help when one morning, you find an extra limb in your lower body, that really means something BAD
• Never ever ever ever forget that we are animals so we deserve to act as one sometimes — Expressing what we really feel like getting mad or accepting mistakes… cry, laugh, eat, have fun! We all deserve it
  

This chapter said it more clearly that I could. I guess my advice is that you read the book (Getting Real by 37signals) — for those specially dramatic, paranoid, and sad little perfectionists out there. Wake up and smell the reality. Think outside the box but never forget that there is a BOX and that BOX defines all the possibilities.

Ciao! and for developers or engineers… remain SANE!