We’re working on something at the moment. It has to be a top
secret, but we’re up to release a private tp3 beta by 12-12-12. We’ve been
planning to do this beta release in November, but we still want to make it even
better. It’s mostly some UX face lifting stuff that needs to be done.
Actually, we’ve run TP3 by some friends/clients/partners for
a pre-release usability testing, that’s when it turned out that the cleanup is
really required. We do need to get rid
of the visual glitches, awkward error messages and some weird behavior. For the cleanup, we’re using a work practice
called
subbotnik. In short, this is an activity that requires
intense efforts and focus over certain, usually, short period of time (and, no,
it’s not a volunteer work. It’s just an intense mode). Subbotnik has proven to
be the fastest way of cleaning up as much garbage as possible.
So, we’ve been in the subbotnik mode the whole last week,
and now we’re on to the second week.
Here’s how the progress looks after the first week:
One of the most challenging parts about this subbotnik is
coming up with daily builds. It turned out that we’re having the same problem
as Woody Woodpecker has in the
Solid Ivory cartoon.
Woody wants his solid ivory billiard ball, and the chicken wouldn’t give it
back to him thinking that he’s stealing her egg!
Guess who... is Woody, and who’s the chicken? The chicken
are whoever folks that don’t allow the build to become green, so it can be
deployed at last, and Woody is the Product Owner who wanders around and keeps
asking about the build, and when is it going to be finally deployed, and when
answered that the build is not yet even green, who then would be so kind to
make it green.
It appears that we have overlooked this essential part.
Normally, we release a new build once in 1-3 weeks, and we have a smooth
process for that when there’s no rush. In the past, for a
1-day
subbotnik, it was OK to do this build just once, and not necessarily on
that very day. But here we just not did
it by the book (just in case,
the most
ancient preaching about daily builds dates back to Joel Spolsky back to the
far off 2001). We’ve made a bold decision to push commits right to the master and it’s been tough. Sometimes someone would not be
able to do a commit just for a simple reason that the build is either red all
the time, or the automated tests are running. But now it’s somehow turning our
more or less OK (is it
edge
of chaos in action, I wonder…) Lesson learned: when the environment is
changing, some new rules should be set for the game.
Also, it appears that subbotnik mode is perfect just for the
clean-up. The progress seems to be great with bugs, but not as great with mini
user-stories. Yesterday we
managed to complete a huge user story (Quick Add in Columns and Rows) with a cycle time 47
days! Obviously, it is wiser to split such user stories into smaller chunks.
