Professionalism Series – 6: Beyond the milestone
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Work is stressful around deadlines. Sleep comes at a premium.
In fact, you work so hard for the deadline that any additional days you spent after (missing) the deadline gets that much more frustrating and tiring.
The problem is that often people will put all of that “last-home-stretch” effort for, say, their development deadline ; Or the deadlines for making v.0.1 of some deliverable.
This is a problem because they are inaccurately telling themselves “As soon as I meet this deadline, life will become a cool splat of monsoonal rain in the middle of summer”.
In work, the real work only begins with v.0.1 of something, or after the basic development is complete. Testing will cause a number of changes. After the alpha version we can start analysing, discussing and improving the concepts. We can start getting feedback on our work.
Professionals understand the entire lifecycle of the product, over the next 3-5 years.
- They understand that the “project” isn’t over until the software is launched and maintenance begins, and that the milestone is just one of many that they must achieve in order to complete the project. They also understand their role in each step
- They understand that the first launch is just the first version of the product, which will subsequently lead to other launches. They understand what that means for the type of development and architecture that they must do today.
- They understand the importance of contributing professionally to each step in the process as much as they can.
Understanding the entire lifecycle that a project or product goes through is important, and balancing your stress from the anticipation of what is ahead is also important.
Lifecycles exist for software, for individual documents, for specifications, for plans, for strategy, for website designs, for ads, for brochures, even for people (i.e. their probation, work, and long-term growth at work).
It is also best to take this lifecycle as a way of building a sense of community. Just like in college you were able to divide the years according to semesters and breaks, at work you could end up saying “oh in two weeks are are starting code-camp again”
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