Developers
Productive and Organized
Software developers need time to code without distractions or interruptions. Once we’re done, we need to know what’s next on the list of features and bugs. It’s pretty straightforward when you’re working independently or on a small team, but as team size increases the ideas of being productive and organized start to be at odds with each other. Instead of just tracking your own tasks, you’re also meeting with colleagues, responding to emails, and weighing in on feature debates. These things all eat away at productivity. They’re necessary though, right? I mean, release dates need to be scheduled, project scope managed, and issues communicated. My goal is to assist with these efforts without disrupting my own productivity.
Minimize Distractions
I spend all day on a computer with the biggest distraction known to man, the internet, just one click away. The fewer websites and apps that I have to switch between to do my job, the better. Along with a well-curated etc/hosts file, the case list view in FogBugz helps me stay organized and on task. On a single screen, I see a list of features to implement, bugs to fix, and code check-ins to review. As I work through the items on the list, I remain focused, keep the team up to date, and stay out of the time-sink that is my email inbox.
Don’t Get in My Way
I pretty much live in Vim and my shell. I use these tools because they get out of my way and let me get things done. The features that we’ve built into FogBugz keep this same idea in mind. Pervasive keyboard shortcuts are designed to let me work as quickly as possible. It may not sound like a lot, but using ctrl-enter to submit forms, or other keyboard shortcuts to access menu items and select table rows saves me a ton of time. Little wins like these every day make all the difference in the long run.
Keep Everyone Informed
It’s the team leader’s job to know how everyone’s work is going. The only way they can find this stuff out, is if you tell them. But, everyone knows it’s annoying to give constant status updates, and pop-in conversations kill concentration. By entering time estimates for cases and telling FogBugz what I’m working on throughout the day, I enable others to use Evidenced Based Scheduling to see what I’m working on and predict how much longer it’s likely to take. Better yet, the more I use it, the more accurate it becomes.
Your Collective Memory
I work on a 10-year-old piece of software. While bug tracking and change logs are nothing new, the way that FogBugz and Kiln integrate them makes people much more likely to use them together. It's really easy to use Kiln Annotate and FogBugz to figure out why things were done when it isn't clear from the code alone. This is great for a couple of reasons: first, my memory isn't that good, and second, when a new hire can't figure out the history of a piece of code, they usually ask me about it because I've been working on it the longest. So, I'll take them through the process of tracing back through Kiln annotations and attached FogBugz cases. This makes people more likely to actually do the work, and less likely to guess. In an ideal world, all choices would be clear from code and comments, but we ain't living in that one.
Learn from Experience
With FogBugz’s new time-based reports, it’s easy to review historical data over time. We’re in the process of running a beta program right now. Looking back at what happened during our previous betas, I can see whether to expect bug reports to increase over time, or taper off as we issue more fixes. This knowledge prepares me for what’s coming and lets us better manage the workload of the team.
