So working the grind of deadline after deadline after deadline does not help your inspiration, that is one thing i’ve learned over the last few years. Which makes me wonder does working without a deadline even exist?
I’ve heard it so many times we work in an agile way, yet when it comes down to it the office still needs a timeframe and an estimation. Even when an estimation is given, it is mostly too much time and needs to be done quicker and whoever shouts the loudest gets the benefit of the doubt.
And I think this also is part of the reason deadlines keep shifting along, the initial estimation isn’t accepted, the desired deadline is missed, some manager flips a bit, and shifts the deadline along.. only to ask for another estimation because it still needs finishing. Thus the grind begins again…
Agile does have deadlines of course only they are much shorter ones and way more in communication with the customer, less waterfall-ish but at the same time it requires the customer to be accustomed to the agile method, this isn’t always the case. The customer just wants the finished product most of the time.
You can imagine that all inspiration flies off at the sight of pressure and talk about money. Sometimes the challenge under pressure can bring inspiration to get it done.
But when the pressure cooker is set too high for too long something has to give.. and cracks begin to appear and team members suffer.
Inspiration comes and goes, but I believe a team that is inspired and challenged in a healthy way is a team that performs better, at the same time the team needs to be heard and listened to. The estimation will always be an estimation, we cant see into the future (leave a comment if you’ve some how found a way).
I’ve noticed the more I take a step back from a project and look around at whats actually going on in the market the more inspired I get to look into new technologies that aren’t project related, and inspire me to want to explore. So making time for this next to a project is a golden apple. This is something I want to make sure is reincorporated into the team.
I hope any managers reading this will think to offer their team time off the large mega project to explore and come up with new ideas. These new ideas may help the project in the long term, I’ve never met a developer that doesn’t want things to go faster/better/easier in their work.
I’m also curious to know how other dev teams get past the grind and stay inspired, leave a comment and join the conversation?
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