Friday, what a great day it was

Last Friday was the best day at work for a long time. I worked on my 20% project - the idea is to add to JIRA ability to create project templates / copy settings from one project to another.

Why it was so great?

• I did what I wanted to do - I was fully responsible for the solution, so I could choose how I’m going to fix it and live with the consequences
• I made instant progress - the task was limited in scope and I had knowledge needed to figure out all moving parts
• it was an isolated task - I wrote everything in the plugin, no need to worry about breaking API, touching sth which I was not supposed to
• part of bigger goal - figuring out this stuff and implementing this feature was part of the bigger goal, I knew if I succeed I could simplify / influence other parts of the problem
• direct relation with customer needs - the issue I worked on had more than 100 separately voters and watchers
• it was challenging - how much I can do within one day, I knew I could do a lot, but it was a bet with myself
• the matter of urgency - it was important for me to fix it before the next week so I can understand more the bigger project
• no QA - no tests, no different versions, just bursts of code

It was great to work like that. Sure, your feelings may vary. Maybe you prefer different style of work. It’s not something I can sustain or produce great quality software with the whole week. But it’s good to go wild from time to time.

If you’re running a team of people and you notice morale going down try challenging your team. Give them some slack. Ask them to do things differently. Or maybe most important figure out what each one prefers to do. In the end we all want to contribute but sometimes differently.