Chapter 9: Time Management
This is a very interesting chapter as everything revolves around
time and it is something that we never seem to have enough of am I right? Of
course I am. I myself have been trying for years to come up with some sort of
consistence as far as a schedule goes, but with my situation up until I started
with college was different as I am on disability so I tried to keep to a
regular schedule so I didn’t get caught in some weird time continuum while I
figured out my next step. I have found it difficult to manage time while in
school though and try to set a schedule, but each semester that changes and
well I get out of sync. Thank goodness this is the final semester (well until
grad school if I go that route) and I will hopefully be gainfully employed
shortly thereafter. Anyways I suppose I should get back to the chapter at hand,
time management. I found it amusing how he referred to meetings as necessary
and huge time wasters because it is so true no matter what your job is. I never
gave much thought about how much per person it actually costs for a meeting.
There are a lot of good points in the chapter concerning meetings in general,
but a lot of it is in my opinion common sense. Have and agenda and a goal. Well
of course there is an agenda and a goal, I know there are a lot of times where
meetings don’t seem to have either but there generally is. I really like the
stand up meeting like we are suppose to do for Agile development. Twenty
seconds per question, no more than a minute per person; in, out, done the way
it should be in my opinion. Short, sweet, and to the point I say. No beating
around the bush. I liked his quote from Kent Beck, “Any argument that can’t be
settled in five minutes can’t be settled by arguing.”. Awesome words of wisdom.
There are a decent amount of items in this chapter I really enjoyed, especially
how he compared stuff to D & D type games, like focus manna, if you use up
all your focus manna in the meeting, you’ll have none left for coding, how very
true indeed.
Time Boxing and Tomatoes. I am definitely going to give this a
shot. I think it is a really great idea to set a timer and let nothing
interfere with your plan, actually carrying out to a tee may be a different story
but still worth a shot none the less. I love it; dividing your time between
tomato and non tomato time. I am actually laughing right now thinking about it,
how many tomato’s did you get done today Jim?
Only 15, slacker! Over all I thought this chapter was well done and a
very important, if not one of the most important things that needs to be worked
out. If you can’t learn how to manage time effectively and overcome adversity
when something hinders your plans, you will have a hard time getting things done
and you will probably find yourself moving out of a job versus up in the job.
Chapter 10 Estimation:
I really like how he put it right out there in the first sentence.
“Estimation
is one of the simplest, yet most frightening activities that software professionals
face. So much business value depends on it. So much of our reputations ride on
it. So much of our angst and failure are caused by it. It is
the primary wedge that has been driven between business
people and developers. It is the source of nearly all the distrust that rules
that relationship.”
He hits the nail on the head as far as what an
estimate is and how they are interpreted differently. As commitments and
guesses. In reality an estimate is just a guess at when you think you will be
done, however they are never set hard in stone, but the issue is that the
business man hears oh it will be done by such and such date, great. I mean
there really isn’t much that I have to say on this chapter other than when I
give an estimate, I try and be as clear as possible and look at all the facts
and take in all the information that I have and add on some extra time just in
case it falls through. I also make sure that I communicate if anything isn’t
going according to plan and adjust accordingly. There were a lot of great
techniques he described, but I think it is something that has to be learned by
doing, and by making mistakes.
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