Timelines Expectations In Software Development

As a programmer what yields more stress than broken code is most definitely failure to deliver assigned tasks to the client. This doesn't mean one has failed to finish up the task, rather finish up in the designed time. This in the worst case scenario would be losing the client or being sued by the client for losing so much money in the time you failed to deliver a task.

Well, having given a brief insight into its causes, I have an experience of my own concerning the issue to share. While I was in the deferral program’s initial stages, I was surely excited and ready to deliver features at the earliest of convenience. The Pivotal Tracker always had feature broken down and with them came a timeline against which everyone would be executed.

During sprint planning, I happened to have done some choices beforehand of the feature I wished to handle first which was only a two-starred story for the first week. It didn't feel convincing enough because I would be the cool developer I set out to be, so I request for another one point story to top it all off atleast save the goal in mind.

Being green in Django and new to team software development, I realized halfway the one-star story wasn't getting any easier, and I was so afraid I wouldn't even be able to deliver this simple feature. I kept raising stand-ups that had statements like ‘fixing user validation bugs’ for two days.

Having learned my lesson, a day left to the demo, I came out to the whole team about how I realized I couldn't deliver the promised tasks but rather just the one-star story that week that I had taken on as an extra. Luckily enough, a group mate of mine was able to pick up my would have been major task.

At this point in time, I learned that I was supposed to anticipate my weakness of having little proficiency in Django and I should have accounted for it in setting a timeline for myself. I also realized that If I had pushed back earlier, I would have produced the best work I was expected of.

A fortnight later, I was back in the same scenario where I had two features on the backlog but had to get assigned new tasks for the week. Having learned from my past actions, I asked for a point feature that I would be able to deliver alongside the other pending two within that week and most realistically, I was able to deliver these tasks as promised.

So, I urge any developer to take on tasks they can best handle rather than promising and not delivering which instead damages their reputation.

Thanks for the read.