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On the other hand, I will say what I consider a fairly obvious idea and suddenly all the "execution guys" are working on building a better birdhouse instead of

On the other hand, I will say what I consider a fairly obvious idea and suddenly all the "execution guys" are working on building a better birdhouse instead of a bikeshed. I used to put a lot of energy into making clear that "execution guys" are allowed to climb up out of scope and change their minds about an approach. But at a point I think it's reasonable to look at this pattern and make the assessment that I do indeed possess some kind of skill.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Ah, yes, the two-wheeled conveyance storage building... One of the issues I have had with "idea people," is that they think that every deviation from their Big Idea is "bikeshedding." On the other hand, I like to keep the product at "beta" quality from as close to the beginning as possible. That often means that I spend a lot of time developing infrastructure scaffolding (like persistent preferences, error handling, security, accessibility, localization or messaging systems). This means that I'll suddenly stop producing new features for a few days, while I set up some infrastructure (that will result in an explosion of features in a few days). In fact, I'm doing that, right now. I am writing a "developer" screen for the app I'm developing. It won't ship, but will allow other technical team members to do things like set up test servers, and evaluate REST interactions. The non-tech people aren't gonna see much for another week or so. They'll have to be happy with what I've already given them (and they are quite happy).
- jancsika 5y ago
  > One of the issues I have had with "idea people," is that they think that every deviation from their Big Idea is "bikeshedding." That's probably a confusing example. I don't mean that implementers aren't doing anything. What I mean is something like this: the people who are building (or planning to build) a bike shed are often the last people to realize an obvious problem like a) the target audience is birds and b) birds don't ride bikes. My professed skill is that I can get people to shift to working on a birdhouse. That avoids the danger of ending up with something like a bike shed retrofitted with pneumatic tubes designed to pump in birds from the outside world. I'm not claiming this is a unique skill. But things like SVG's path arc syntax exist, so it's not ubiquitous.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    > But things like SVG's path arc syntax exist, so it's not ubiquitous. You get a +1 for that. ;) Totally get your example.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Ah, yes, the two-wheeled conveyance storage building... One of the issues I have had with "idea people," is that they think that every deviation from their Big Idea is "bikeshedding." On the other hand, I like to keep the product at "beta" quality from as close to the beginning as possible. That often means that I spend a lot of time developing infrastructure scaffolding (like persistent preferences, error handling, security, accessibility, localization or messaging systems). This means that I'll suddenly stop producing new features for a few days, while I set up some infrastructure (that will result in an explosion of features in a few days). In fact, I'm doing that, right now. I am writing a "developer" screen for the app I'm developing. It won't ship, but will allow other technical team members to do things like set up test servers, and evaluate REST interactions. The non-tech people aren't gonna see much for another week or so. They'll have to be happy with what I've already given them (and they are quite happy).

jancsika 5y ago
> One of the issues I have had with "idea people," is that they think that every deviation from their Big Idea is "bikeshedding." That's probably a confusing example. I don't mean that implementers aren't doing anything. What I mean is something like this: the people who are building (or planning to build) a bike shed are often the last people to realize an obvious problem like a) the target audience is birds and b) birds don't ride bikes. My professed skill is that I can get people to shift to working on a birdhouse. That avoids the danger of ending up with something like a bike shed retrofitted with pneumatic tubes designed to pump in birds from the outside world. I'm not claiming this is a unique skill. But things like SVG's path arc syntax exist, so it's not ubiquitous.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > But things like SVG's path arc syntax exist, so it's not ubiquitous. You get a +1 for that. ;) Totally get your example.