As a kid, I used to love making model airplanes, spaceships, dragons, all that. And my dad would sit beside me and say “be prepared!” every 10 minutes or so. This bothered me; I had the instructions, glue, paper… what else did I need? Ten minutes later, hands covered in glue, with a dragon that looked more like a corgi, I realize what he meant.
Here’s why i’m telling you this, it has to do with products and the half-baked nature thereof. Why do so many products seem “unfinished”, like they were dying to push the product out before the monthly company beerbash?
This, we believe, has a lot to do with planning. A few analogies to explain.
Analogy 1: Sports Team.
You’ve worked together as a team, and figured out everyones strengths and weaknesses. You’ve gone over every move. You become accountable for your every action, and you’re there to bail a teammate who slips. You communicate with your teammates clearly; the rest comes naturally, like habit.
Analogy 2:
Remember lightning McQueen and his trusted pit crew from CARS? When it’s a matter of milliseconds that separates your driver from 1st(yay!) and 8th(place), you start researching ways to improve the process, to shave off that extra second.
Back in our world of software development, planning may seem too pedantic, but contributes greatly towards the tone, quality, and expectations that are set (Academics have written tomes on this and labeled it the Software Development Life Cycle. Feel free to wikipedia it.) There’s a research/requirements phase, a design phase, implementation, and a possible disposition phase (Make sure unit/integration/acceptance tests are included!). And as with many software projects, you make sure you glue together the right components, in the right order, evaluating at every step whether you’ve done it right/performantly. And when you’re done, you give to a QA team that evaluates EVERYTHING in the product. Rinse, repeat.
Planning sensibly can be responsible for wonderful things. The feeling of seeing a checklist where all the features are ticked off, the unit tests all come back green, the product is snappy like a beast, and clicking the button to make the product go live… it’s better than sex. Better than GOOD sex, even. .
Else you’re just left with glue on your hands, and a feeling of shame.
Be prepared.
Sunil is very inappropriate, likes gantt charts, and plays his les paul when he’s not fighting internet explorer.