Skip to main content

Productivity for a Developer

For my final blog for “Software Design and Architecture” this semester, I decided to research time management for doing software projects. This is an issue that I ran into creating my final project, and I thought it would be worthwhile to learn from my experience while it was fresh in my mind.

I thought this would be particularly helpful because I would like to do a few projects for fun over the winter break. I don’t think that I’m alone in that without a looming deadline, what little time management skills I have tend to go out the window. I hope this will change this time. I doubt reading an article will transform me into an extremely productive person, but at least it might point me in the right direction. I can only hope.

The article that I found was from *codeproject.com* and was titled “Time Management Tips for Developers.” I thought it gave some good pieces of advice. Even if you are not a software developer, you could benefit from all the advice given. I will focus on three pieces of advice that I would like to work on.

“Set your goals: long term and short term”: This is something that I know I should be doing, but I never do it in a methodical way. I make myself a goal, but never stick to it. I also never write it down, either. It is an incredibly lazy process. Which, funny enough is the next point.

“Do not plan in a lazy way”: Guilty as charged. I don’t put very much effort into planning. It’s no wonder I don’t stick to it. However, I have found it is sometimes hard to plan a project that I have never done anything quite like. Strangely enough, this thought was the topic of the next point.

“If you can't plan, just track”: You should keep track of what you are able to get accomplished in a day and note where you waste your time. This seems like something incredibly useful for accurately gauging how your time is spent. It is too easy to either get discouraged or have false enthusiasm because you have either under- or overestimated how productive you were.

It seems like the author has some experience in doing projects like I am doing. It is really impressive that he can follow my thought process when reading one point and have the next point agree with what I was thinking in the next point. There were several other points that were good as well. I highly recommend checking it out.

Work Cited:

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/11502/%2FArticles%2F11502%2FTime-Management-Tips-for-Developers

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mark Richards on the Evolution of Software Architecture

For this week’s blog on Software Architecture, I listened to Episode 3 of the “Software Architecture Radio” Podcast, which featured Mark Richards, an independent software architect. He has 32 years in the industry, with more than twenty years as a software architect.  They mostly talked about the evolution of software architecture. Although some of the things they talked about went a little over my head, I was able to pick up on the majority of what they were talking about.  He divided up the evolution of architecture into five stages. He talked about evolution happening in vertical and horizontal slices, that is within each layer and one layer affecting those above and around it. The layers were (1) hardware, (2) software, (3) human interaction, (4) social interaction, and (5) the environment, such as the internet of things. He said one thing in particular, need, drives change the fastest. As an aside, he also said that that’s the best way of teaching something i...

Sprint 5 Retrospective (Capstone)

It is a shame that we are so close to the end of the semester. We were gaining so much momentum. It took us a while for us to get off the ground, but once we did, we never stopped gaining speed. I feel we will be able to keep this up through this last sprint. My hopes at the beginning of the semester for what we could accomplish were unrealistically high, but I am not disappointed with what we accomplished. We have not completed a full working component quite yet, but we are very close. I think our efforts are best spent finishing the one we are currently working on and doing it right. If we divided our efforts into starting something new, we run the risk of not fully completing anything. In the sage words of Ron Swanson, “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” If we are able to get the tabs working beautifully, I will be happy with our effort. I have felt that our group has done a phenomenal job this sprint and every sprint before with our communication. We have a few ...

Sprint 4 Retrospective (Capstone)

This sprint, in my mind, one of the most important things that I was able to figure out was getting connected to AMPATH team through the Zeplin app. It seems that someone, perhaps accidentally, disconnected me from the group. Once reconnected, I was able to connect the rest of my group. Although it hardly was a difficult task, it is hard to overstate how important it is to be on the same page as the team you are building the product for. It could have prevented a lot of wasted time on our end, and it makes it more likely that they get the end product they want. Probably the most important thing I did in terms of learning about the tools we will be using was creating a “spike.” It is a new term I’ve learned that I will add to my lexicon, meaning to build a prototype of a product, diving deep to learn as much as you can. I touched upon it in my last apprenticeship patterns blog post, on “breakable patterns.” I failed to make a successful working prototype that did everythin...