productdevelopment

This is supposed to be fun

Kevin Kaminski Uncategorized , , , , 0 Comment
This is supposed to be fun

I took a break from work and went to Portland for a few days. It’s amazing how a change in your ordinary routine can allow serendipity back into your life.

This Is Supposed To Be Fun t-shirt

You can buy this shirt from Tender Loving Empire at http://gen.rs/Tnqy

I randomly walked into Tender Loving Empire and loved this shirt enough to buy it. For me, it’s going to be a visual reminder at work that it should be fun. Yes, really.

You can earn a living while being miserable just about anyplace. Discovering a fun occupation and workplace is one of life’s great challenges. Read more

Keep work from expanding to fill time in software development

Kevin Kaminski Uncategorized , , , , 0 Comment
Keep work from expanding to fill time in software development

Work expands to fill all time available for its completion

I’ve been thinking lately about time and deadlines. Do any of these sound familiar?

  • You go to a meeting scheduled for an hour. A project decision is made in the first fifteen minutes, and the next forty-five minutes are spent discussing and re-hashing that decision…only to then settle on the original decision.
  • Your software team works in two week sprints yet seems to scramble in the last several days of each sprint to finish the bulk of the work.
  • In a project with a deadline months away, the requested feature list continues to change and grow while the deadline remains the same.

These examples are all instances of Parkinson’s Law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Read more