It’s 6 o’clock already?!?
Ever have one of those days where, no matter how hard you try, you can never get any real work done? Well, I think I have been having those days for the past 3 weeks straight. And it doesn’t look like it is going to end until I leave my current job. Which thankfully is in just under three weeks. This is one of the main reasons that I have not been posting as much as I usually do. I simply do not have the time.
The real problem with this scenario is that I also do not get any work done. I currently have a design and a test plan (TDD) to create, get reviewed, and then code on my todo list. I have been working on this for the past week. Something that, if left alone, I could probably do in a couple of days. Ugh! Now don’t get me wrong, I like being busy, but this seems a little excessive. The root cause for this is the amount of meetings that I have to attend and the amount of questions that I have to answer each day.
I think I now understand what Agile Programming means by sustainable development. My current pace is not sustainable. It is also not agile. For everything that is coded, a full design—done in uml—must be implemented, including both class diagrams and sequence diagrams, along with a full test plan. Then, before you can begin coding, these documents must go through a review process. And they must be approved. Then, once they are approved, you can code your unit tests (this part I do agree with, i.e., the test-driven development part). I think the biggest problem that I have with this is just the speed, or lack thereof, inherint in this approach.
If I create a design and have it reviewed and then change that design, I must then resubmit it for review. True, we have found many problems with peoples designs by following this approach. However, it has also greatly slowed down the progress of true development. On the other hand, we are still trying to teach developers how to properly implement unit tests, so maybe the speed isn’t such a bad thing. Still, it is hardly something that can be sustained for any real length of time.
In addition, we have some people who are doing almost nothing and some people who are doing almost everything. This also does not help with sustainable development.
So, all I know so far is what sustainable development is not. Hopefully someday I can work somewhere where I can see what it is.