More of the same, with a little different.
Things are moving at a quick pace, and the theme this week was teamwork, leadership, and how to perform well as a group. We also read a lot of material to understand more about how we as individuals perform, both in a group setting and on our own.
Some skills I identified that I think I do well are surveying/questioning, reviewing/revising, and reading. After some careful consideration, I think I need to work more on making schedules, using my time wisely, and being prepared.
I’ve decided to start at least trying to using some kind of schedule/task tracker to hold myself accountable for things. It honestly is getting to be a necessity now that I’m juggling a few different priorities.
One thing that we were exposed to was a lot of project management basics. I honestly don’t agree with a lot of how projects are run in most companies I worked at, and the same kind of problems with culture that I have witnessed are present in many PM content online. A lot of what makes (or made) working in a lot of SWE environments is the constant, inevitable creep of “MBA ick”. In any business environment, there will always be someone, somewhere pushing for meaningless extra metrics, consistent check-ins, and some new buzzword that Atlassian told them about.
I love Kanban and meeting with stakeholders as much as anyone else, but there is a point where it becomes too much. I’ve seen it firsthand and it is difficult when people don’t want to admit what is happening. If up to 3/4 of your day is spent planning how to work, you will never actually get work done. This zone is a death knell for startups, and seems to be where larger companies go to stagnate forever. Not for me.
ChompingTheBit 