I’ve worked with great coders, brilliant coders who could run laps around me and make my mind spin. They could see the code in their heads and write it out like Shakespeare.
But when it came time to organize this work, they couldn’t organize what they were doing or trying to accomplish into a plan that the rest of the team could understand. Explaining it to someone was a struggle and when they had finally had enough they would throw their hands up in the air and say the words so many of us have heard over our careers.
YOU’RE SLOWING ME DOWN, I COULD BE DONE BY NOW.
Truth be told, no, they would not have been done by now, they would not have had it working, and when they were done, it was filled with bugs. They would be done what was in their head, but not what was needed.
When we are at this impasse, of having something delivered that isn’t truly what we wanted, it’s at this point that we would sit the coder down and walk through the following steps that should have been done initially.
- What are we trying to achieve?
- How are we going to do it?
- Talk about it and find the holes in your design.
- Task it out and Estimate it.
And then the code improves and what we deliver lines up with what was expected.
