Surviving at the Software Industy (12) - I'm Almost There.

Today we are gonna talk about starting the implementation of our project. We're done planning by now and we can start programming. Our movie for today will be the first contemporary Disney Princess, The Princess And The Frog. Tiana will join us as we develop our own project as she shows us the dedication she put on getting her restaurant.

Ever since she was a little girl, she saw how her dad wanted to put a restaurant on New Orleans called "Tiana's Place". Even when her dad passed away, she kept his dream as her own, and she put all her efforts to get the job done. 

The first thing we need is to follow our Software Development Plan. We already did it on earlier stages, and we shouldn't waste our effort. That was the guide we gave to our client, so we better stick to it. We can also reduce the risks of having low quality, lack of visibility or running out of time. It's not good to have a jar of coins without knowing how much money we have inside of it.

For our plan, it is extremely important we define some "milestones" or things we HAVE to do to maintain order over the general project, our lovely book recommends us to do the following activities on every project.

• Requirements updates 
• Detailed design 
• Construction 
• Test case creation 
• User documentation updates 
• Technical reviews 
• Defect corrections 
• Technical coordination
• Risk management 
• Project tracking 
• Integration and release
• End of stage wrap-up

Returning to the mini-milestones, these are activities that can only be classified on one of two categories, "done" and "not done. They have only two scenarios. Tiana shows us how this works.

Her first goal is to get the money to buy the place for her restaurant, then buy the furniture, then becoming a human again (you can't be 50% a human and 50% a frog), oh wait. This will help you to keep track of the project and to know how much of the project is done. If you want to, you can have a list of mini-milestones done so you can get inspired from that.

Also, one thing is to do stuff, and another thing is to do something good. You can check the quality of the product by making technical reviews. If your team starts missing their minor milestones DO NOT PANIC. It's actually pretty common this happens. You will have to pay more attention to the needs of your team and to be there for them to solve most of the problems rapidly.

There are different ways to manage a team, chose the one that adapts better to the way you are confortable with. It is important you don't feel awkward on the leading position, because you'd spread the awkwardness through your whole team. Remember, when you have all your plans on place, You're Almost There (yes, like Tiana's song).