Hopefully a Plan that Works
For the first time since starting at Raizlabs, I’m the lead developer on a project. It’s not the first time running a project, but it is my first time running a project with a real process, and with a real team.
One of the great resources that I have getting this thing off the ground is some well designed bits of process designed to help in planning through the entire project. The first big part of this is a formal process for writing up the plan for the project, then making a presentation to other developers to see what they think of the thing.
Having to think through the “gotchas” list, plan through the data model, and put together a coherent plan for the services layer of the app has helped get some early plans for shape and structure in place, and will hopefully make for a better execution now that the project is starting to get underway.
The other interesting side effect to this is that I’ve been too busy planning to write code for the project, so I’ve been forced to write up / talk through bit sized bits of project architecture to then hand off to the other developer on the project to implement. It’s been interesting seeing bits of plan that I’ve assembled come together, especially as my plan for services layer involves layering generics, protocols, and Operations in a slightly novel way, hopefully saving a lot of fuss and effort in the longer run.