Wednesday, April 25, 2007

When the going get's tough ...

Man, have I been busy lately!

Actually that is a very lame excuse for not having posted for a long, long time. The excuse even gets lamer, when considering the reasons for being busy, namely being lead developer / project manager for two projects at the same time. So what happened to me using agile development princples and being in control and all that crap? Do I not only talk the talk but also walk the walk?

Let me put it this way. If I hadn't had done so I probably would have had a complete burn-out, as just like in real life both projects became the busiest at exactly the same time. And just like the average male, I'm very bad at doing two things at the same time. So I had to go back to my manager and say: "Hey I only have one brain (and what a fine brain that is, ahum) but you are asking me to do a two-brain's job. So if nothing is going to change, I need to make one of those jobs a no-brainer so that I can concentrate on the other one." And as nothing changed, that was what I did.

This made the other project manageable again, but for someone like me it did not make my job much fun anymore as I like to do things properly. So that was when I decided to go to Costa Rica for holidays. When I got back, I felt soo much better again. I even recovered the energy to start thinking again about reviving this blog. It still took two months to actually do it, but what the heck.

So, all you nice people out there, my lesson for today is: when the going get's tough, just walk away and have a vacation!

Well that's not true of course, but it does help. So next time I hope to write about my experience on the better of the two projects that I dare to qualify as a really 'agile' project.