theAdmin.orgGrowing a simple software business

Well I did a demo of my Ruby on Rails at work yesterday and things did not go too well. First issue was the meeting started late and ran late. It was supposed to run from 2:30pm to 3:00pm but ended up running from 2:45 to 4:30. Also only about half the people showed up that needed to be there. Another problem was I updated the demo server it was on and for some reason about 3 major bugs appeared. Luckily I had my development laptop there so I could show the working system but it was a major error on my part for not testing the demo system fully. (Note: the code was fully tested and it ran fine but I believe that not all the required data was in the database. XP and their continuous integration is 100% correct) Oh well, I still was able to show off some more bits of it that worked and everyone like the graphical redesign (except for the IE’s broken rendering, only two small bugs though).

The main things I have learned from this demo:

• Integrate in the demo/staging environment after every checkin. It only takes a few minutes but will save hours of debugging (bye-bye Monday..)
• Have a backup in case all hell comes a calling (Thank you Dell 700m and Ubuntu)
• Keep on track on meeting, try to make them informal but stick to the time frame.
• Get regular reviews, this was my ‘weekly’ review from the first week of January. If you cannot get them push for a 10 minute update or stop the project and explain the costs of not spending the time.

Not bad for my first major software project, I kinda like getting some scars and war stories so I can tell all the future developers (and my audience here).

Eric Davis

{Sorry about the late posting, have been away.}