So here I am… sitting at a downtown, high-market fruit juice outlet sipping a concoction that costs 2 lunches; and guess what, no wireless@sg! Luckily for me, this means quality time to sit back, relax and type what comes to my mind.
This has been an interesting week. Last Friday, we talked about how we should think about the people that we want in Spiragram. Exactly 7 days to the dot, we made 2 wonderful hires – Jeff and Hong Kiat. This time round, I didn’t even get to doing the paperwork. They’ll both start next Wednesday and we’ll get to that then.
So, Spiragram is now in a good place – we have a good flow of interesting projects, and we’re attracting good people to come on board. So, what’s next? Isn’t that the kind of question you’d enjoy asking all the time? We have a saying in Chinese – 天時，地利，人和 – which literally means right timing, strategic position and motivated troops. And you’ve got all three in the bag, you go all out and do something big. Something big, that’s what we’re going to go for next.
At Spiragram, something big would mean taking a big step toward our vision. Let’s recap – we’re about liberating, leading and inspiring programmers to their full potential. Let’s work on the first – liberation. A programmer myself, one of the most frustrating situations to be in is when you get handed some blueprint and asked simply code it. That’s right, you’re not involved in the creation process of the original idea or product, instead, you’re just a sous chef preparing a dish based on some recipe. This kind of work is boring and unengaging. And it’s very hard to come up with great code. ‘Liberating’ could mean getting the programmer involved in the product creation as early as possible. In this way, they are in the conversation with clients, product managers and other stakeholders of the product. They know why certain decisions are made. Their council has been taken into consideration. They become stakeholders too.
In the past, our client engagement will start from sales, followed by the brainstorm team comprising of senior people, then project managers and finally the implementation team. If you are a programmer in this kind of setup, the first time you’d come to contact with the project is when you are handed technical specifications, use case diagrams, storyboards and a gantt chart. Come to think of it, no wonder our work end up looking like drab.
This has got to change. There’s no other way to get great-looking projects unless every single person on the team is involved from the very start. If you run a development house yourself, you’re probably thinking about costs and planning issues that comes with this new arrangement. It’s an interesting problem for the bosses and planners. And it is a problem worth solving.
So, in the name of liberation, and since I’ve just got two new project leads today, I will try out this new arrangement right away.
