Surviving at the Software Industy (13) - Focusing your Sokka.

I just saw Avatar: The Last Airbender again, and that reminded me how good of a series this is. My last entries will feature this series instead of movies because that's the only thing I can think about right now (haha!).

This stage is all about reviewing and making better the documents of the architecture of the project. Sokka is the strategist of Aang's team, he's the one that creates and reviews the plans and schedules for the team to follow. His name comes from the Japanese "sokka" that means "understood".

The Team Avatar is constantly preparing to fight a war, and they have to go and talk to the two big nations that still live and to be sure their plan is good. They first go to the North Pole and talk to the strategists there. They have a fight and win, but when they go to Ba Sing Se on the Earth Kingdom, things don't go very smoothly, and they lose control of the capital. As a PM, you have to be sure this doesn't happen, you can't lose control over a team, by reviewing every part of your Design Document.

In one episode, Sokka tries to explain the plan to the army that will be invading the Fire Nation, but he is pretty unsuccessful on doing that, he's getting nervous and even if he has a well established plan, he's not helping the team to comprehend it. If you make a perfect document, but no one is able to read it, then you're doing something wrong.

If you can have a detailed document, you can be sure that every part of the architecture will be covered correctly.