Category: Articles (Page 233 of 256)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

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.

WordPress Plugins: A Dilemma

April 11, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In case it isn’t obvious from some of my previous posts, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to some of the problems with the WordPress plugin repository.

Though I’ve already stated this in previous posts, my goal isn’t to complain without offering solutions – I hate seeing it, and I hate doing it – I don’t think it’s proactive and that’s why I enjoy many of the comments that have happened around this particular space.

But as I begin consider moving back to a premium model of offering WordPress-specific products and services, this has raised yet-another-dilemma.

Stop Complaining About Customers

April 10, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I enjoy the most about Twitter is the ability to meet, greet, chat, and learn from other people in my field.

Granted, not everyone uses Twitter for the same reason, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to know certain people in my particular development space, and enjoy the conversation as much as the next person.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s helped make me a better developer because of the conversations that have gone from Twitter to this blog, or vice versa.

But there’s something that I’ve noticed on Twitter among my fellow developers – most notably freelancers or those who are at the head of smaller businesses – that I can’t seem to understand (or endorse): It’s complaining about customers.

Software Project Estimation: Free or Paid?

April 8, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Ever since I’ve gone into business for myself, software project estimation has been one of those skills that I feel as if I’m constantly refining.

Sure, I have a process for how I go about doing it now, and I have open conversations with potential customers as I try to understand their core business need before I go off to estimate the project, but the truth of the matter – and anyone who’s ever estimated a project knows this – is that estimating a project is also a function of how well the customer understands their current problem.

By that, I simply mean that if a customer has a felt need and they have a vision for how their process can be improved, it’s easier to come up with an estimation for a project than for a customer who has a felt need but a vague idea as to how it may be solved.

There’s a lot that can be written on this topic, but I’m primarily concerned with just one aspect of estimation in this post: should estimates be free or paid?