Quantum Leaps In Productivity

Here is a place to write about how we as developers, teams, and organizations have achieved order of magnitude improvements in our own productivity in relatively short periods of time (say, under 1 year).

For me, it was my favorite tools, which includes TableOrientedProgramming. However, it seems everybody has their own favorite tools that fit the way they think and when they have them, they zoom. (See HackerLanguage.) However, this applies only at an individual level, for no two people think alike. One must apply InkBlotSoftwareEngineering one human at a time. The OneSizeFitsAll GoldenHammer has been elusive.

I suspect that finding the right thing to work on is one of the biggest challenges to the productivity of a company, team, or individual. Finding the right thing seems more likely in an environment of experimentation with fast feedback. For me, the agile/XP customer-driven perspective has help focused my team's development efforts, and the rapid feedback helps the organization alter its course. I'm interested in seeing if higher-level languages really produce higher productivity on big projects. In my spare time, I'm experimenting with Python on a big C++ project. -- KelleyHarris

For me, it was a constellation of things that began with hearing WardCunningham speak to PAUG (PortlandAccessUserGroup) about ExtremeProgramming. I had been programming pretty much by myself professionally for 14 years, and as a hobbyist since I was 12. I thought I was pretty sharp because of all the technologies I thought I understood, but I had never taken into account process or technique. Although learning about XP was the trigger, and I like and do some XP, much of the work I do is still solo and not TestDriven. Nevertheless, my code is now written by intention and with a committment to simplicity and clarity, and that has made a vast difference. I'm now seeing tangible results from all this new thinking, and I'm guessing I've become about 5X more productive in the last 9 months, 2X in the prior year = about 10X in 1.75 years.

More and more I think the big gains occur when we find ways to quickly hone in what the customer really wants or needs. TheLeanStartup? book and related principles are suggesting pragmatic ways to do that. There are other approaches on that scale. But then there is the even bigger scale, of what is really worth doing at this time in history? What are the big challenges and opportunities, for our energy, talent, and resources? -- KelleyHarris

CategoryProductivity