Final Prototype Retrospective

I like the happy endings.

But it’s always important to summarize what was good and what was not in this experience. Here is a list of good principles and techniques applied:

  • Time-Boxing: define time limits it’s very important for me, it allows me to focus more on my goals. When I didn’t use this technique I did frequent task switching, passing from a context to another, multiple times during a day, but that was a cost, my projects usually went ahead without reaching any goals, or reaching some goal with greater cost than expected. Having a time box helps me to say “no” and to keep my mind on the same context more time. With good results! Sometimes, especially when I’m prototyping something, it happens that my time-box finishes without having got any result, in those cases I stop working on it: my prototype is failed. But it’s ok. If I think about that, I know that it’s never a complete failure.
  • GTD: remember things is a load, heavier if I have to switch among different contexts. Having my tasks in a clear to-do list, visualize it, even if I work on my own, is an habit that I could not live without
  • Document Everything you need: most of the time it’s an investment. If I have not documented the micro upgrading steps, I will spent more time on stack-overflow searching for the same posts again and again
  • KISS: an example, when I start to merge my legacy code upon the new Umbraco release I have thought to change some folder’s or component’s name as my team did on the legacy application, they did so just for some internal convention with minimal evidence to the final user. After a while I said to myself: “keep it simple”, the new release works with this naming convention (in my environment) and it’s not a requisite to rename that components just to keep the legacy naming convention. So, I kept the Umbraco convention and I’ve not spent a minute on it.

What could be done better

Studying and deepening not known topics is part of a prototype. If I had spent more time understanding how the new Umbraco release was made and which impacts could I have had, probably I’d have reached the same conclusion (abandon Umbraco 7 and upgrade to Umbraco 6) in much less time…
But my “keyboard attraction” often wins over the rational approach…

I will think about it the next time.

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