devmorgan.com

I have had a lot of time lately to try to figure out who I am, but really, I only have questions.

Am I a Developer? Am I an Academic? Am I an Industry Professional?

I don’t even know anymore. As the summer is starting on it’s downward slope, I’ve realized that I am not going to finish all of my grad work before my intended “start working again” date, which means I might need to make changes to my plans. This scares me because I am all about the plan.

Am I a Planner?

I understand that sometimes it’s better not to have a plan, or to let the wind take you wherever you may go, however, I also realize it is critical to have a plan. When is it appropiate for each one?

In the development world, you need to have a plan. People that code from the hip generally fail as the project scales. At the same time, I will be the first to tell you, that if you spend all your time trying to figure out the plan, nothing will ever get done. For me, my development plans tend to be short, major goals to accomplish and some general ideas of how to do it. Designing the plan needs to be simple, but loose enough to allow for change.

Am I a Designer?

The problem is, when designing the plan, you don’t always know what is coming up. However, if you specifically define something in the plan, you need to be able to follow through with it. The designer has a picture of what they want, a set of requirements they are looking for. The plan can be a set of requirements, for software it tends to be measurable goals and tasks that can be met. What about real life? Can you set requirements as a part of the design plan?

Am I Breaking Requirements?

What happens when a requirement changes? Was it dependent on something you had no control over (Loss of job, Loss of relationship, Gain of opportunity, Gain of responsibility)? If the dependency fails, are you at fault for the breech of requirement? Does it even matter? Sometimes having overarching requirements is helpful in life and in software design - but we can’t always forsee the best path to reach them.

Do Requirements Define the Project?

In software development, I say yes. In Life? Maybe? My top requirement right now is to finish my Master’s Degree. The path I need to take to do this can go in many different directions, some easier than others. Finding the right path is the hard part, and has been giving me a lot of sleepless nights lately. What is the right path? What process will be the most efficient in development? What process will be most efficient in life?

Is Life a Project?

We spend our lives committing ourself to making life better, as least, I hope we do. I tend to want to look at life as something that we are continually working at to achive our goals. This however, implies that we have clear goals. If we can assume that we live life to accomplish our goals, and we know that the goals are the requirements of the project, how do we define those requirements?

How do we Define Ourselves?

Is how we define ourselves based off our previous projects that we have already accomplished, or would it be better to define ourselves by our requirements that we have set for ourselves, and how we plan to accomplish them? Maybe that’s the question.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm and is filed under life, rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.