The time of year for reflection and looking back over the last 12 months, to supposedly learn, is fast approaching. Now, I wouldn't be one for too much introspection, but as I spend a large chunk of my day staring at a screen I do think about how to make that habit somewhat useful. Improving your workflow is always important.
Reference Point
This year I have come across the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to being productive. So, I'll run you through what I have learned, and hopefully you will find it useful.
I began the year a ClearCase smoker, abusing ArborText, and still trouble shooting DNS issues on my Windows XP powered Lenovo T440 just to access the VPN and intranet servers. That's before I could even check out a repo, or
Putty onto my Solaris VMs to run tests. Sprint planning and project management were done through Eclipse and RTC and some Python programming too. For scripting I liked NotePad, and you can throw Cygwin, InkScape, and some other gems that PTSD has erased from my memory.
So, now you know my reference points. I'm coming from deep in the pocket Enterprise-grade workflows, and though I'm not sure of the actual term for that setup, I think I'll try and coin a phrase for it: 'Water-Agile-Fall-Poker-Sigma-Sprinting'. It has got all the buzz words in there. Maybe I could be a consultant, or a therapist.
Tools
Having dumped most of those in January and started a relationship with a Mercurial Git, and placing my fate squarely on a more open source based distributed model of trust I can definitely state that using RhodeCode Enterprise is better for my sanity when it comes to version control. Now that the product plug out of the way, lets get into some more in-depth findings.
Pycharm
Pycharm has replaced Eclipse and Notepad++ for me when it comes to coding and writing. Its ease of use, and less cluttered feel to Eclipse, lends it to being more enjoyable to code in, and also write it. It has replaced ArbourText / Oxegen as my editor of choice and I've switched from XML to ReStructured Text. If you are a technical writer, give Sphinx a go!
Markdown and Ghost
Having to crank out a weekly blog brings its own challenges. Quality being one, and that certainly takes a hit more often than I'd like. But it did force me to look into the best ways to get that done. The first winner in my 'getting the blog done' competition was Markdown, and following it closely down the stretch was
Ghost. Ghost is a very nice blogging platform which you can run on your own server and they provide a really nice split screen editor that previews as you type. I use it to create all of the work blogs, and I run my personal blog on DigitalOcean. But they hardly need an introduction.
Google Drive
A surprising winner. I used it a few years ago, it lost appeal very quickly and I went back to using email. But, for meeting agendas, daily syncs, and working on non-development files like presentations or training material it has proved very useful to me, and those that must suffer working with me!
Slack
The previous three tools fall into the good category, but Slack falls somewhere between necessary evil and bad. It is an instant messenger service which plays a role in any workflow, but its best feature is definitely /collapse. Type that into the chat to kill all those gifs flickering in the corner like an epileptic seizure trigger!
It is unfortunately too invasive in my opinion, but just like 'guns don't kill people, people kill people', it's all about how you use it. I've tried using the browser version but then I completely forget about it and see nobody's messages.
Perhaps if it had smart messaging and only informed you of what is interesting then it would be more useful. Messages like "cake in the kitchen" should rank higher than "what have you done on issue #467". My message to Slack: Get smarter!
Asana
This is one of those productivity porn apps. Asana is a TODO list on steroids which has very low barriers to entry. Before you know it you have lists, tasks, projects, and a dashboard for everything down to your sandwich filling. The problem with it is that because opening a task or issue requires no effort or thought, the App becomes polluted with inane comments tracked as tasks, and projects become over burdened because you cannot lock a feature list. I tried it, it failed, perhaps it'll be my Google Drive in 2018!
Honourable Mentions
Obviously this is not a complete list, so here are some honourable mentions that I have not covered:
- Nix: which not covering completely will get me in trouble with our 6'4" Nix evangelist Rok Garbas, but I did cover it in more detail earlier in the year, RhodeCode and Nix Package Manager. See Rok, I like Nix too!
- VMware: this is not new as I used it before, but it is still good!
- Bike Shedding: Along with new tools, new concepts also come into your life. Bike Shedding is a beauty, and it scientifically proves something that I have experienced for years.
Just like an Apple discovered gravity and Newton figured out what it was telling him, meeting dark matter was discovered by a bike-shed and according to wikipedia Poul-Henning Kamp figured out what the bike-shed was saying.
Bike-shedding so succinctly describes what happens when mission creep and knowledge debt come together in the perfect storm of verbal fulmination during meetings, that I am proposing all future meetings should have a Terry Tate on stand-by waiting to take out those who stray off topic, and into the bike-shed they will go! In fact, if you call a meeting without an agenda, Terry should flip your desk!
Conclusion
As the year draws to a close, the mulled wine starts to flow, and the festive cheer gives way to January blues, one way to kick start the new one would be to throw out the old and rusted and give the new and shiny a go. Cut out the unproductive habits, fix what is broken in your workflow, and enjoy the feelings of delivering projects on time, with tools that suit you, and a reduced meeting count thanks to Terry!
Have a nice Christmas break!
Brian