Problem

Getting started.

Solution

Start from scratch. Start small. Accept that pretty much all projects will remain Work-In-Progress for a long time. Set out to teach-by-doing and show less than perfect examples (just like the real world).

Hope people like the approach.

Discussion

This is partly a matter of motivation and partly a matter of organisation. The main blocker being looking up at the mountain of work and deciding whether to climb even the foothills.

The truth is that I like to tinker (a lot). I’m a good tinkerer. I’m a good starter. I’m a lousy finisher. I’m lousy at committing. To make this project work I need to play to my strengths and make it all about a lot of ‘starts’; a ratchet of work.

I bore quickly and generally once I’ve figured out ‘good enough’ I move on to other things. This (oddly) served me very well in my freelance career. Clients tend to want ‘an answer’ and they’re happy if that answer is a bit wonky but works. If they need more robust solutions then ‘works’ includes it ‘not being wonky’ but often the aim of work is to produce a result that is ‘good enough’ (‘fit for purpose’ in management speak).

I keep putting of starting this project simply because I keep thinking ‘oh, and I need…’. This bollocks of course, it’s just another form of procrastination. The best solution, I think, is to face the fact that I’m going to be doing lots of projects in parallel and they’re all going to be work-in-progress for a long time but that’s okay because we’re building a system that will change a lot and experience will change our requirements along the way (sounds a lot like most professional jobs I’ve had in the past).

Now I can here y'all screaming “Agile!”, to which I say ‘fuck off!’. Look, Agile approaches have their place (sadly they’re more often abused that used properly) and I’ll apply some of the Agile manifesto precepts but I’m not a big fan of prescriptive methodologies for two reason; firstly, it’s too easy to get bogged down with ‘getting the methodology’ right rather than focusing on actual work, and secondly, which method to apply and how often degenerates into a religious war that amounts to little more than opinion.

I’m a big fan of reading about base principles and using what’s useful and ignoring the rest. I recommend you do also. Anyway. Onward. Let’s see what happens.