Tag: devops

The good news is that we’ve been making great time on some of our development. The bad news is that our current process didn’t really have any QA baked into it so some of the cards that were approved by my CTO, didn’t really fully map to the requirements I drafted.

Humph.

It’s not a big deal, but I have currently working thru how to do requirements QA into our work processes so when we consider an area done, it’s really done.

I’m going to add a QA subtask for each item and then run the user test scripts. Then, I’ll create defects against the cards.

I’m trying to decide if there are new cards or just subtasks. Unsure at the moment.

Our CTO’s “real world” work commitments are now nearly done so he’s getting back in the swing of things. He’s made more progress in the last three days then he’s made in the last three months.

This is super good since we’re running out of cards for our developer until he puts some of our next gen functionality. We’re making good progress and sans some major issue, I think we’ll be ready to review the app with outsiders by mid to late summer.

Our development velocity has certainly picked up with our new developer. Of course, it’s hard to not pick up if one starts at near zero.

The biggest challenge now isn’t the dev and delivery, but ensuring we have decent requirements in place. I’m also finding that not all requirements are created equal.

A large part of the system are complex forms with a bunch of conditional logic while other parts are fairly static. The conditional logic forms take a bunch of time while the account management pieces are fairly simple.

Originally, we were just focusing on doing the collection area (complex) but in an attempt to give me some air cover we’re now doing two areas simultaneously. The account management piece along with the collection.

I’ve love to add a UI and requirements person to really increase our velocity without having to break my back every day / weekend but it’s a cost we just can’t justify. I do anticipate making that add in the near future and might look toward the ol’ unpaid intern route with a promise of opportunities in the future route.

But, for now we’re keeping those requirements coming one way or another.

We held our kickoff with our new developer today and it seemed to go well.

The process of preparing for the kickoff and devops planning has been helpful as well. We’ve tightened up on our planning, requirements process and communications so we’re actually more organized now than before. This can’t be bad.

Of course, the entire point is to start making development progress so hopefully that’s successful too.

I’m off the next week so I’ll be up to my neck in requirements and high-fidelity prototypes.