3 ms·

tying the release date to the calendar, not to any particular feature (Just thinking aloud) Can this be applied to other areas (like "learn Language X")?

sokoloff 18y ago
Yes and no. The problem is the [lack of] specificity of the goal. You either did or did not release software on date X(+). To say whether you did or did not learn a language by date X is too fluid to be particularly helpful. If you did literally nothing, then you clearly failed; otherwise, it's all just shades of grey. + - One can argue whether or not you got "enough" features/tickets/bug-fixes into what you did release, but that's the beauty of regularly scheduled release "trains". If a feature misses one train, it just hops onto the next one, which is never very far behind. We do three-week cycles and have been the entire 6 years I've been here. When I first joined, I didn't see any way we could keep it up and argued against trying. Now, I can't imagine how our company would continue to run if we didn't have that 3-week heartbeat. (We are a IR top 100 e-tailer, over 200 technical staff, over a dozen "large" projects in flight at once, etc. Not every project goes with every release, but the entire site, fulfillment and support systems all go every 3, 4 weeks over Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years.)
- eru 18y ago
  Perhaps you can just "name and shame". I.e. say you want to learn language x, then force yourself to report in public upon your progress every monday. You will feel whether you made good progress --- and you will definitely know when you did not do a thing.
  - ananthrk 18y ago
    Yes. This will be similar to "committing to a release date" (no matter what) and figuring out ways to achieve the same. We can also draw other parallels like "keep improving" (without incurring long-term debts).
sharkbrainguy 18y ago
Replace "learn <language>" with "port <program> to <language>" and it can be directly applied. It would probably help if there was an existing test-suite for you to measure progress against.

sokoloff 18y ago

Yes and no. The problem is the [lack of] specificity of the goal. You either did or did not release software on date X(+). To say whether you did or did not learn a language by date X is too fluid to be particularly helpful. If you did literally nothing, then you clearly failed; otherwise, it's all just shades of grey. + - One can argue whether or not you got "enough" features/tickets/bug-fixes into what you did release, but that's the beauty of regularly scheduled release "trains". If a feature misses one train, it just hops onto the next one, which is never very far behind. We do three-week cycles and have been the entire 6 years I've been here. When I first joined, I didn't see any way we could keep it up and argued against trying. Now, I can't imagine how our company would continue to run if we didn't have that 3-week heartbeat. (We are a IR top 100 e-tailer, over 200 technical staff, over a dozen "large" projects in flight at once, etc. Not every project goes with every release, but the entire site, fulfillment and support systems all go every 3, 4 weeks over Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years.)

eru 18y ago
Perhaps you can just "name and shame". I.e. say you want to learn language x, then force yourself to report in public upon your progress every monday. You will feel whether you made good progress --- and you will definitely know when you did not do a thing.
- ananthrk 18y ago
  Yes. This will be similar to "committing to a release date" (no matter what) and figuring out ways to achieve the same. We can also draw other parallels like "keep improving" (without incurring long-term debts).

sharkbrainguy 18y ago

Replace "learn <language>" with "port <program> to <language>" and it can be directly applied. It would probably help if there was an existing test-suite for you to measure progress against.