Work (in the immortal words of Scott ) continues apace, with me flying to Indianapolis on Monday to meet one of our biggest customers to pick her brain for enhancements to one of our online therapy management tools, all in the shadow of yet another looming round of layoffs. No discernible buzz this time about our group getting hacked at (and we’re as small as we can be), so it’s all of us or none of us, I wager. Actually, work is tougher but funner than it has been in the past, mostly because I (and Nils, my UE colleague) have abandoned fear! in favor of some organizing principles for our work.
- Do not act solely of fear
- Be skeptical of orders that are borne of fear
- Do not build anything that won’t get used
- Do not build anything that won’t carry the story forward in some meaningful way
- Apply good design AND good programming practices to everything that we do build (now including automated regression testing, syntax checking, minimal markup, hardcore modularization, and the like).
It is amazing what an effect 1 and 2 have had. That’s right, folks, abandon fear!, just step over to the tent and have some Kool-Aid… While it is impossible to abandon fear entirely, reminding ourselves to put it in its place has been quite useful. Certain competitive threats are shown to be meaningless inconveniences, while others loom only appropriately large. Bad ideas borne of fear are shown to be bad ideas, and abandoned. A greater honesty, resolve, and professionalism are apparent in every communication.
Of course, without 3 and 4, the first two might still have you building useless things, an egregious waste of your effort and the user’s time. Since it is far chaper to do the hard work ourselves than to multiply small bits of hard work over the entire user base, we must be willing to adhere to 3 and 4.
5 speaks for itself. A thing to be made should be made well, and one should not shy from using whatever tools or techniques are necessary to help one build a solid product, even (especially) if that includes asking others for help. Naturally, failing to ask others for help is usually borne of fear!, bringing us back to point 1.
