Chapter 9 in The Clean Coder is about time management. The first thing it goes over is meetings. While meetings are very important and worth your time to go to , this is not the case with all meetings. In fact, it is actually considered unprofessional to go to too many meetings, which would not leave time for you to do other stuff. If you find yourself in a meeting that is not worth your time, it would be wise to find a polite way to exit. Time management is important outside of the workplace also. It is important that you are getting enough sleep at night to ensure that you are ready for the next day of work. Caffeine and short breaks can help you keep focused if you are having trouble. It is important for a software professional to keep their options open by keeping an open mind about alternate solutions to their problems. It is not wise to become so vested in a solution that you are not willing to abandon it for a better solution.
Chapter 10 is about estimates. Something that was interesting to me about estimations is when the author said, that business like to view estimates as commitments while developers like to view them as guesses. The problem with the business looking at them as commitments is that the estimates may not always be correct. This may require a developer to work extra hours in order to fulfill this “commitment”. Developers should not make commitments that they cannot meet. When they make a commitment, it is expected that they will honor this commitment at all costs. This is why when developers give an estimate it should be a very well thought out estimate to avoid any complications.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by jonathanpaizblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
