project management
Spreading TDD throughout your company
First, the pitch- CCP is looking to hire someone to come to Iceland and teach TDD with Python for a couple days in August. We're looking for someone that's taught TDD before. We already have people who have been doing TDD for a while now and to support it...
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Python Enrichment and PitP
When I was starting my job at CCP, I posted about some things I wanted to do as a lead. I've been through two releases with the Tech Art Group in Iceland (and for the past 6 months or so been the Tech Art Director here) and figured I'd...
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Development directors?
I’ve worked with (for?) several development directors. Some have been talented individuals, some incompetent. But invariably, the role has (in my experience) been useless. I’ve always seen it as a needless position on the producer/PM hierarchy. And oftentimes an add-on position due to explosive producer/PM headcount growth. I understand...
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How to deal with being a negative developer
There was a recent AltDevBlogADay post about Negative Developers and Team Stability that hit home. It’s not that I think the advice was particularly interesting (good, standard stuff), it’s that it reminded be that I’ve been a negative developer. I don’t know what I could have done differently. I just wasn’t...
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Decisions, decisions
Some people can find me a bit over-earnest in my quest for automation. I’ve finally figured out how to know whether something is worthwhile to automate. Are you making any decisions when you do this? And if someone is making decisions that may be unnecessary: Can we get from...
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Never build upon closed-source frameworks
A poster on tech-artists.org who is using Autodesk’s CAT asks: The problem I´m having: I can control the ears now manually, after setting up the reactions, but apparently the CAT system isn´t respecting any keyframes I set on the facial controls, neither in setup nor animation mode. He already hinted...
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Someone has a hat to eat
In December, I made a blog post about being happy. A anonymous (of course) commenter said: Hey Rob. 5 months? Are you really this shortsighted? It’s like watching a kid say he’ll NEVER get tired of THIS toy. Frankly, if you don’t get tired of it you stopped growing....
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Don’t forget outsourcers!
In the comments on post “Internal Tools Only Require the Critical Path“, Robert Kist points out a few problems to think about when developing internal tools that may have to be used by outsourcers. I absolutely agree and writing outsource-compliant tools are something many TA’s (including myself) can struggle...
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“Refactor”
Refactoring is defined as a “disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior” by Martin Fowler. But its everyday usage takes a very different meaning. We use the word refactor to everything from the original meaning, to a complete...
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Too ignorant to know better
My first big python project last year was yet another feed aggregator (taogreggator). Before I started, I looked around at what other aggregators were available, and wasn’t happy with any of them in terms of features, complexity, or trying to get each working. Of course, 9 months later, that...
