Projects Retrospective
Dev Log #1 of what I do when I am not in the middle of looking for work
I have been using Threads a lot. It’s been nice to talk to folks about things and it’s algorithm is starting to connect me with more developers and such. You can follow me there if you want: @Managing a Starship
I was about to write up a whole thing on Threads about what I am struggling with currently and it became many threads long. I also should probably chronicle my learnings and process, so why not here!
Time for a retro!
Feeler’s wheel
I’ve been working on a mobile app to help me better attach feelings to my current state. There’s a neat, segmented circle that can help. Looks like this:
Given that I have been interested in building something with this for a long time I thought it would be a good opportunity to start streaming the work on Twitch. I’ve always liked the community of streaming, I enjoy teaching and have been able to code with an audience before, so it all felt like a good way to go.
I came up with a schedule so I could give a slice of each part of the process as if I were working with a team:
Mondays were for doing Product work
Tuesdays for Dev work
Wednesday was Triage and Dev
Thursdays for QA tasks
Friday was a free day. I could pick whatever I wanted to do.
I did it all. I started with a one pager, wrote and refined a bunch of tickets, built a couple of features, made test plans, found bugs, you name it. It was cool and it really reinforced why some of these processes have emerged and stuck around for so long.
In total, I did it for about three weeks before the unfortunate reality of my job search took most of my capacity. That’s not a ton of time in terms of streaming, I know, but we work in two week increments in software development so we can evaluate and readjust. Essence of small ‘a’ agile!
What went well?
It’s a lot of fun!
That is the most important part in all of this. I am not coming into this trying to make it into a job because that would make it difficult to enjoy.
It would be lie to say I haven’t thought of ways to turn it into work? Yes. It would be nice to do something I love and enjoy for four hours a day. (I believe in the four hour workday. Going to write about it soon!)
Primary takeaway? It’s a lot of fun.
Reinforced good processes I’ve followed
On the product days I did what I have done in the past.
I wrote a one pager that talked about what we were going to do and why. It really helped focus me on what I wanted to accomplish, and what was going to be ignored for the moment. It is smart to know what you aren’t doing so you can focus on your MVP.
I also wrote and refined tickets. That was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I’ve been trying to be better about practicing good CI/CD so I was focusing on both what the smallest ticket was, and what the smallest unit of work I could commit each day was. Having a real example drove home how important it is to do this. It also means that I could show a real example of it working to others to help with understanding it. I’ve had previous employers try to implement a better CI practice with teams that were not practicing it and fail because they forgot the importance of example.
If there is only one thing I take away from all this work, it’s the importance of planning for continuous integration.
I can fill in a lot of time on stream
I was worried at first that I wouldn’t be able fill up a stream with information. Turns out there is a lot to say about each of the different things we have to do on a product delivery team. To be fair, I filled some of it with tangents about agile process and other wayward thoughts, but the main content is definitely there. Also, my wife tends to think the content in my streams are interesting and that is all that matters!
Knowing this will make it easier in the future when I finally get it together and start my podcast that is the namesake of this Substack.
I really enjoy being secretly educational
Fridays were my free for all days so I chose to play a game and talk about it. I ended up having a great conversation with a couple of folks about the thinking behind why a door works the way it does in the game Oxygen Not Included. It was a cool lesson about building features and ensuring you validate the intent behind it. I still think it is the best way to teach.
What did not go well?
I am hard to find
I don’t think there is a lot of interest in finding development or product management streams on Twitch. I think I was able to get one actual person who found me while I was working on my project. I had two others join when I was playing games. I also had a couple that followed, but did not chat (power to the lurkers!). The others have been folks trying to get me to use their services to design logos.
I don’t think three weeks is a ton of time in terms of streaming, but I also think that I am not going to get people discovering me if I continue to focus on the project part. At least not for now. Even though I feel like practical examples are lacking in the software development education sphere, it would be better to try and drum up interest when there are folks I can engage to measure that interest.
My streaming format is a bit difficult to digest
To be specific, I was performing the tasks for that given day for three hours straight. To me, there isn’t a clean way to break it into segments because it builds on previous context. I put timestamps on the VODs I uploaded to YouTube, but that is a very tedious process, and I haven’t actually done it for all of the videos there. It’s a lot to parse through.
Oh dear. Cursory search says attention is held for 20 minutes for public speaking… Probably why movies have that explosion or something at the hour mark. Three hours is a bit longer than 20 minutes!
A three hour VOD is a lot to ask of someone. With three weeks worth of content we are now hitting around 30+ hours to watch through for a project. Granted they are split by day, so if someone wants to only see the product stuff, they can. It would be easier for folks to see if they want to come along for the ride if the time commitment wasn’t three hours.
My thoughts here would be that the YouTube channel I upload VODs to should be more focused on the individual items in the stream as a sort of advertisement to catch the streams and interact there. I feel like you can ask more of a person’s attention if it is live and they are able to interact in some way.
What are we trying next?
I think I am going to lean into the part of the stream I had the most fun with which was playing games I am familiar with and talking about how their design can help folks understand software development.
I term I keep using is “secretly educational” but it might be more apt to say “deceptively educational” for the goal I want.
Like I mentioned above, I got more folks when I played a game. I’ll bet if I keep finding games that have a passing interest with folks, then I can draw more people into the stream. Then, whenever I find something to talk about, I figure out how to keep it in a tight 20-30 minutes. What will help is keeping the themes I mentioned above. For example, Monday is still focusing on Product. We talk about how do we define a feature in the game so it can be built, or how we take that feature and break it into smaller parts. Maybe we switch up the Triage day to talk about UI/UX.
It does mean I am abandoning the building in public of the project, which is unfortunate. I still feel like there is a lot more value in it and maybe it’ll come back around if I decide to plan more around parts rather than stream of consciousness. I am however a big fan of stream of consciousness when on stream. People don’t work off of scripts and I am a fan of that realism when showing someone how something is done. It’s also difficult to do something, remember what you did, and then recreate that situation. This is a tangent.
Cool. We are only at a seven minute read at this point so let’s talk about the other part too!
Articles
I think I wrote about burning out on these previously when I talked about how I was tired. To be honest, it has been a struggle. I still have a relatively long list of stuff I think about as a manager, but the drive is just not there to write about them.
I know most of this is how much brain and energy has to go into a job search. We’re at month six I think and in total I’ve had not a lot of success and even less feedback on why it hasn’t been successful. Rightfully so, I am depressed over that and it kills any momentum. My focus is waning.
This’ll be less of a retrospective and more of a statement of where I am at on it.
I’ve got 10 drafts. Two of them are duplicates of me attempting to talk about how I learned my interviewing methodologies from late night TV. The others are various subjects I have wanted to chase, but fall victim to my mental state and ADHD. Many half completed items! It’s overwhelming to see.
I really do enjoy writing them. I wholeheartedly believe that knowledge should be shared and that what I have learned over these many years doesn’t need to die with me. Sometimes I’ll get a comment or two about something a reader liked. Extremely exhilarating! Even one person saying, “This is cool!” is enough.
It’s just been a bit difficult.
What are we trying next?
Problem #1 is just me advertising that I am doing this. Like I mentioned earlier, I have been working my way through Threads to find folks interested in following me. I need to remember to post there. I also have an Instagram attached to the Threads account. I need to do things there as well. I am understanding why folks have social media managers for this stuff. It is a lot to remember after you’ve already put a bunch of energy into getting it out of your head and somewhere accessible.
And that might be Problem #2 that I need to solve. I might need help ensuring that I don’t build all of this in silence. I know people who can help me. I just have to ask!
Problem #3 (rule of three for comedy, always) would be the cadence. I really wanted to do this weekly. Having a consistent schedule of this is important for interaction. However, my brain only has so much focus left. It’ll probably be looser on when I write and release stuff and I won’t be as hard on myself if I spend a whole month not releasing something, which just happened! No articles in October? Ah well.
What else is there…
Podcast?
You might notice that the name of this Substack changed from Daniel’s Opinion Time to Managing a Starship. I’ve kind of branded myself elsewhere with the Starship so I figured it would be good to keep it consistent. I liked Daniel’s Opinion Time. It was something I would use in talks that I gave to let the audience know that we are outside of the objective parts of what I was presenting.
I have talked a lot with folks about a podcast that goes over the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation to showcase the management moments in it. I’ll usually talk about how much the first two episodes of the show have a lot of those moments in it and how Q is an entity that captures out of touch senior leadership. It’s wild. Can you guess what I want to title the podcast?
Yep. Managing a Starship.
I don’t know when I will get this off the ground. I really enjoy the concept, other people seem interested in it, and I have gone over the first three episodes of the show to find moments. Like the articles and the streaming projects a podcast is another thing on the pile fighting for focus.
That’s it!
That’s where we are at.
Job search? Still terrible.
Other stuff? Up in the air.
If you are reading this and any of the things I mentioned sound interesting. Let me know! Like I said, most of this has been done in relative silence so I don’t know which is most interesting to folks. Any of them accomplish my goal of getting knowledge out of my head.