DawnBringer3D Tips & Tricks, Personal News, Game Development

Are You Able To React?

One of the most important things today in software development is reacting to changes. The faster we can react the better.

Let’s take an example :

You are working on a software project that has been going on well for a while, but lately things have been progressing very slow due to many reasons (e.g. code architecture had to be changed, flu..) and you know that the the project won’t be ready by the deadline.

Now you have got two choices :

1. Have enough balls to take the ownership and raise the problem.
2. Or keep quiet and hope that everything goes well.

Let’s assume that you chose the second one, what will happen is that you’ll use even more energy to keep the deadline and hide it from the customer, in reality you are just pushing it further away.

Classical situation : pushing the system makes the system push back even harder and harder. The leverage isn’t in working more, remember you cannot change the time. Think the time as your ally not as an enemy, you’ll just need to get more time or drop features to reduce the time needed to complete it.

They key in these situations is to take the ownership and raise the problem, first inside your team and then to your customer.

Inform the customer as soon as possible and set up a meeting to think about solutions for the problem. The faster they know it the better as then they can made adjustments to their plans and so can you. Also it builds up a trust relationship between you and your customer.

Conclusion

The example was just one case, it doesn’t have to be a customer case, it can be any problem, for example inside your team or organization. The same rule applies for all them, there is no sense to not to raise the problem – hiding the problem usually always costs more in a long run than solving it. It is a bug and it will cost a heck of a lot more to fix later!