Alan Keefer (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} akeefer) wrote,@ 2008-08-28 21:42:00 |
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So that bit where I said I'd write more often?
Yeah, apparently I totally lied, seeing how I haven't posted in over 3 months.
A fair bit's happened since then:
Personally the most gratifying has been the way the PC product has gone. We took a lot of big bets as far as architectural changes with the product, and they've pretty much universally paid off so far by reducing complexity and thereby improving the quality of the implementation and our ability to add features and fix bugs. And since pretty much all of those bets were things I pushed for or otherwise pulled the trigger on (and universally they're things that I would have accepted the blame for if they didn't work out), it's very personally gratifying to see all those things work out as well as they could have. On top of that, I'm hopeful that we'll get things ironed out for the next release as well: everyone is basically on board with the plan for the new, more agile process and the tools are all in place to help keep us on track. It's still not going to be easy, but we really have a chance now to build out a really solid, full-featured product, and that's about the best outcome we could have hoped for when all this madness started about 14 months ago.
I wish I could write more publicly about exactly what we've done, what mistakes we made to get into the situation we were in, and how we've managed to accomplish the nearly-impossible task of turning a project of that size and complexity around, but the world of enterprise marketing and sales would probably not look kindly upon such candor. So if you're working on your own software project or trying to manage the difficult transitions involved in growing your number of employees and customers, or transitioning from a single-product company to a multi-product company, I've got some stories to tell you . . . but you'll have to ask me in person. Otherwise you'll have to be content with my musings on our development blogging about unit testing, managing complexity, language design, and other such things.
Yeah, apparently I totally lied, seeing how I haven't posted in over 3 months.
A fair bit's happened since then:
- Beth finished grad school
- Beth and I took a trip to Ireland and Spain
- We set a wedding date and location
- Beth got a job
- The 3.0 release of PolicyCenter exited feature development and entered QA, where things have gone more smoothly than we could have expected
- Jeremy and I co-hosted what will certainly live on as an epically . . . interesting vodka- and gin-themed all-night cocktail party
- Many hills were run up (or rather, many trips were run up the same hill), many weights were lifted, and many movies (most of them good, most of them also violent) were watched on Wednesday nights
- I've done my best to post about once a week on the Guidewire development blog (http://guidewiredevelopment.wordpress.c
om)
Personally the most gratifying has been the way the PC product has gone. We took a lot of big bets as far as architectural changes with the product, and they've pretty much universally paid off so far by reducing complexity and thereby improving the quality of the implementation and our ability to add features and fix bugs. And since pretty much all of those bets were things I pushed for or otherwise pulled the trigger on (and universally they're things that I would have accepted the blame for if they didn't work out), it's very personally gratifying to see all those things work out as well as they could have. On top of that, I'm hopeful that we'll get things ironed out for the next release as well: everyone is basically on board with the plan for the new, more agile process and the tools are all in place to help keep us on track. It's still not going to be easy, but we really have a chance now to build out a really solid, full-featured product, and that's about the best outcome we could have hoped for when all this madness started about 14 months ago.
I wish I could write more publicly about exactly what we've done, what mistakes we made to get into the situation we were in, and how we've managed to accomplish the nearly-impossible task of turning a project of that size and complexity around, but the world of enterprise marketing and sales would probably not look kindly upon such candor. So if you're working on your own software project or trying to manage the difficult transitions involved in growing your number of employees and customers, or transitioning from a single-product company to a multi-product company, I've got some stories to tell you . . . but you'll have to ask me in person. Otherwise you'll have to be content with my musings on our development blogging about unit testing, managing complexity, language design, and other such things.
