Coming Clean

This week was a good week, and I was expecting it to go bad.

I’ve been in the role of software lead engineer for about 6 months now. For the first 3 months, I was leading a 4 man team, and then I was promoted to oversee a 12 man team. This was problematic because I had assumed a large chunk of the 4 man team development responsibility, and finding myself responsible for the care and feeding of 12 individuals pretty much put me behind.

The 4 man team has a software release at the end of June. The other 8 engineers had completed a release of software a month ago. So, for the past month, I’ve been desperately trying to get the 4 man team back on schedule, while making sure the other 8 guys are busy - busy with the right things, mind you.

This last week was a big week. It was the week I had earmarked as IOC - Initial Operational Capability. Basically, this was the week to go alpha. And we hadn’t begun to wed our back-end development and front-end development.

And yet, things went according to my best hopes and plans. It’s basically attributed to the fact that (A) I design API specifications which are pluggable and thus implemented separately from and in accordance to that API and (B) the developer responsible for the gui was conscious of the fact that he only had two responsibilities: (1) implement the gui per the interaction design and (2) implement the gui such that its interactions are meant to interact with my API design.

I cannot speak highly enough of the developer who worked the GUI. He’s a new hire straight out of college, and he’s easily the best college hire I have seen since I was hired. There’s a good chance he’s better than me, but only time will tell. I hope to get him some fat cash in reward for his awesome contribution.

Tuesday we did the initial wedding of GUI to implemented back-end. It was buggy, but it was working. I felt like we were still walking on that knife’s edge - things either go to plan … or not and badly not.

Today, we have a solid and consistently running implementation of all deliverable capabilities, with only a few lingering interaction details. Now, we have a month’s worth of bug finding and - I suspect - just a ton of polishing.

This has me very excited because it’s validation of everything I have said for the past 3 years. It basically took me getting into this lead position to make this happen, and it just feels awesome to say “see?? isn’t this awesome?? This is how it should happen - this is what we should be delivering.”

The doubter in me says that my lead will not see this accomplishment for what it is. And I just don’t know what I will do if he won’t give me the validation I feel I have earned.

But go team, go! It wouldn’t have happened without them. They all performed to their ability - and we found a number of folks have skills we were not yet aware of. I hope this is just a sign of things to come - designing right, implementing right, and leaving enough schedule fat to really get things tested before release.

I was in a meeting with my project manager yesterday. We don’t get along very well. We’ve become use to each other over the years, but there’s always some residual hostility in the form of not really willing to totally trust the other. He thinks I’m out to get him; whereas, I’m just out to do the right thing and am contentious when he needlessly gets in the way.

So, there we were in the meeting, discussing personnel issues for the next 6 - 9 months. We’re walking through employees, one by one, discussing strengths, weaknesses, best fits, etc. We get to one particular guy, and it turns out we have two wildly different opinions. I view the guy as bright, assertive, and straight-forward. My PM views him as quiet and demurring.

My parting thought on our different views was: “Well, it’s probably because he sees you as an authority.”
PM: “Yes, that’s probably true … and you don’t.”

Pegged. I guess it’s good he finally sees it - or at least acknowledges it. I have a twinge of guilt, but mostly I’m amused. It was good though, because the other day I was rehashing a history of his mistakes that I’m trying to plan to fix that he thinks un-needed. So, I view it as tit for tat.