Dont Let Your Project Ice Over

Hello and Welcome to my Corner!

An Introduction to Myself

I like to make my posts into a conversation or at least like I told them to you from across the table. I was thinking of how to start out writing to this great community and I finally came up with a great Ice Breaker! Oh the pun.

Workloads that Create Ice

My workload consists of managing a multitude of projects this is partly a disaster of my own making but also a result of time spent working. I have over 100 projects that are published to the internet. That being said there is no good way to either reduce the number of projects or touch them more often.

What is Project Icing

That is where this article comes to a head. A common problem I run into with my projects is ice over the project leaving me foggy on what to do or where to go. Like most developers I employ a small army of task management tools but honestly these ice over just as easily as the project itself.

That is what I have come up with a small concise solution to help with project ice:

Write Your Last Thought Into resume.txt

Yep! That is it, our brains are like relational databases in their own way and we usually need a link to stir our memory and jog that mental space back into the clear.

An Example

So lets try this out for an example.

I just finished working on my latest project putting in a subscription module to collect email addresses before launch. It's late and then writing this post took some more time so I am plenty ready for bed. Its time to setup a resume.txt, it should be simple and leave a simple task at hand to get the next round of coding off the ground in a flash.

Here is my example

resume.txt

Okay, its been a good session.
Now you must finish the sign up page scripting to handle validation.

Again, nice and simple. The simpler the better, the more complexity there is in the message the more it serves to add to the ice.

Why resume.txt?

Well it is also imperative to have a nice consistent place to look to get the memory stir going, this goes back to having a multitude of task managers that confuse the idea of where to look to get started.

Why I Think resume.txt Works

I am a post it note kind of person, I like short concise notes that embellish a larger more complex thought that is stored elsewhere. I believe this is a post it note system that can stay consistent across any project. I would also recommend against putting this file into version control as it should be personal to the developer.

Let me know what you think!