The Best Project

The best project I ever worked on and what we can learn about software from the lessons I learnt.

1. The Best Project 🤨 😫 😕 @MikeMcQuaid
2. me 👋
3. Principal Engineer in Communities (GitHub Engineer 2013 – Present)
4. Project Leader on Homebrew (Homebrew Maintainer 2009 – Present)
5. the best project 🎉
6. avoiding legacy systems and building nicely from scratch ✅
7. doing things right the first time and avoiding failure ✅
8. well-staffed team with well-planned backlog of work ✅
9. project result: 💩
10. ignorance 🤨
11. you know everything
12. you know everything nothing
13. (How I Get Things Done) https://mmq.lol/how
14. (G.K.) Chesterton’s Fence
15. “this fence is useless, let’s remove it!” 🙅
16. “this fence was used for keeping sheep out, let’s remove it!” 🙌
17. “this code is useless, let’s remove it!” 🙅
18. “this code was used for keeping bots out, let’s remove it!” 🙌
19. “this code was used for ….? let’s be careful…” 🥳
20. incompetence 😫
21. do things right the first time
22. do things wrong the first time
23. https://timharford.com/2022/05/cautionary-tales- bless-the-coal-black-hearts-of-the-broadway-critics/
26. do things right the tenth time
27. you will fail
28. you will fail privately
29. you will fail publicly (unless privately)
30. failing privately == low cost
31. failing privately == low traffic
32. failing publicly == high traffic
33. insignificance 😕
34. huge ship! 🛳
35. huge team! 🏢
36. huge scope! 🔭
37. huge risk! 💣
38. tiny ship! 🛶
39. tiny team! 👭
40. tiny scope! 🔬
41. tiny risk! 😌
42. your MVP is not very M
43. your MVP is not released yet
44. the worst project 🎉
45. built on legacy systems with little understanding ⛔
46. shipping hacks to clean up later and failing early, often ⛔
47. under-staffed team doing unplanned and backlog work ⛔
48. project result: 🥳
50. 😫 assumed ignorance 😫 expected incompetence 😕 initial insignificance
51. 🧑🎓 assumed ignorance 🧘 expected incompetence 🔍 initial insignificance
52. questions? 🙋 https://mmq.lol/best/ @MikeMcQuaid mike@mikemcquaid.com