Author: Tom (Page 337 of 427)

The Challenges of Building a Distributed Team

April 17, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier today, I shared a post on what I believe to be key strategies in working with a distributed team. As with anything, there’s always a flip side of the coin and, this case, there are definitely challenges of a distributed team.

The points that I’m about to make aren’t coming out of the void, either. In the Envato article, I received a comment that felt deserved a longer response than what normally goes into a comment.

I’ll post the entire comment here and then discuss the key points after:

I’d like to add one more thing as well. You have to find willing participants! No disrespect to anyone but you, pippin, and norcross are very well known WP developers. For an average joe, it’s not really that easy to say, “hey, I have a great idea for a plugin, let me ask some developers to build it with me.”

I think the first thing someone needs to do is network and build some relationships with plugin developers. And good relationships for that matter. Then those developers have to see if it’s worth it to them (do they have time, do they even want to do it, do they want to work with you).

Otherwise, it’ll be hard to work in the way you mentioned without hiring a developer out of pocket.

BUT, if you do build those relationships, or already have them, then the article is spot on =)

There are some valid and compelling points in this comment.

Working with a Distributed Team and WordPress

April 17, 2013 / Tom

In my most recent article on WPTuts+, I discuss what it’s like working with a distributed team and WordPress.

The point of the article was to give a short summary as to how it’s possible and what’s required to do good work.

The primary reason that I wanted to write this article was two fold:

I’ve spent the better half of my self-employment working wit 8BIT in a distributed environment
I’ve recently completed a plugin with two other WordPress developers who I’ve never met face-to-face

I wanted to share that it’s completely possible, but there are some key things that are necessary to make sure that good work actually gets done.

Are You An Open Source Pragmatist, Really?

April 16, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

As far as I’m convinced, one of the things that will forever exist within the WordPress development community is the various degrees to which we align ourselves with the principles of open source software.

Perhaps a simpler way of putting it is that the development community is forever going to be debating over the “spirit of the law,” or the “letter of the law” of the GPL, and will be deriving their actions and choices based on their interpretation.

But this post isn’t so much about my particular stance on the GPL. Instead, it’s more about something that I’ve seen being shared throughout the rest of the WordPress development community since late last week. Continue reading

My Day-To-Day: Inbox Zero

April 15, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Periodically, I’ll get questions on how I manage certain parts of my day-to-day workflow, so I’ve been trying to answer each of these questions in My Day-to-Day. Since email is one of those things with which we’re all too familiar, I figured I’d share how I aim for inbox zero.

TL;DR: I believe that inbox zero is a myth – it’s a goal that’s a slippery slope – and it’s more about tools that help you manage the influx of email than it is trying to answer every email by an arbitrary time of day.

But that’s the long version. As always, there’s more to it than that.

Quality WordPress Products: Do They Exist?

April 12, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I published my thoughts on Software Craftsmanship and WordPress. For what it’s worth, that particular post was one that I’d been thinking about for quite some time, I just never took the time to sit down and actually draft my thoughts on it.

The post resulted in a short, but interesting discussion both in the comments and on Twitter, but one comment in particular really got me thinking more about the topic.

Seeing the terms “WordPress” and “software craftsmanship” in the same sentence makes me LMAO. I just downloaded 3.5.1 to see if it was as bad as I remember. It’s worse. I remain convinced that WordPress was developed wholly by monkeys randomly hitting keys on a keyboard.

The point of this post is not to go back and forth on whether or not the author is correct in his statements. Instead, the comment got me thinking about craftsmanship in the context of the work we do on top of pre-existing systems regardless of the language, platform, and/or framework that you’re using.

Specifically, it got me thinking more about quality WordPress products and projects and whether or not form follows foundation.