Bi-Weekly update 7

Creativity, good intent, and how much of it

As the weeks start rolling by the escaperoom project gets shape. With the 1th of June as the deadline for the product being ready for testing, and the 27th and 28th of June as the release date.
Well, things do not work out as planned. I think we are halfway were we should be. Releasing on the 27th of June still is possible but with much less testing done.

I’m not trying to look good, but I foretold the team this would happen because of how work is structured. The idea was that if everyone showed his best intent and worked in his own productive ‘zone’ everything would be OK.
At first I thought “well what do I know I never have build creative works like games in a team so my experience probably doesn’t translate”, but it turns out building games looks almost similar to how I’m used to do software development. People need to work together, know what is expected of them, how much ‘quality’ the work has to have in the phase it currently is in… and if things get off track you want to have a way of knowing the impact and fix it as soon as possible.
That we needed some process definitely took the others by surprise.

Last week we all agreed that there needs to be a balance between creativity and speed on one hand and some process on working together and a shared goal on the other hand. I like it that we as a team decided to make the improvements (and not just me forcing stuff on others) so from here on things will get better.

Networking animations

I won’t go into much technical detail here, but I was working on getting all moving stuff synced and working well over the network.

The idea is that as you change the letter rotor you get a sequence BAAAA and then the drawer opens. My task is not to get the puzzle magic happen, but make it that other persons can see you doing your bit on the puzzle and that this networking thing is easy to add into the puzzles. As you can see it is a bit laggy and unresponsive, so that is the next thing for me to work on.

Bookkeeping

I finally decided to get a bookkeeper to look at my books and keep them updated.

When I started my business on December 2019 I had the idea of trying to do things myself, but for safety get a bookkeeper to look at the numbers halfway 2020. This to know if I was on track and doing things according to best practices and laws.

Funny thing is that I’m good with numbers and forecasting, but just keep making mistakes when it comes to the details. I have had my share of f*ckups already, just by not paying enough attention.
For instance, I have to phone with the ‘belastingdienst’ on Tuesday because I received a letter stating something strange. I have to tell them that something did go wrong on my side and therefore probably also on their side and now things are lost in their administration…

Yeah I definitely need someone looking over my shoulder when details matter and there is not much room for error.

Job cultures

While working on my escaperoom project I’m already looking for the next project to take on. Last week I did some intakes for consultancy jobs. One stood out from the others in that I walked out at the end, baffled by what just happened.

I want to stay classy with talking about what happened because I’m just a specific person with my own believes and my own working ethics, and it could be that someone else would be very delighted to work in a place like that.

I had an appointment with the owner and the head of the software department. The head of the software department was a nice guy and I had a nice time talking to him about all the good technical stuff they had, so technically I found a match.

But the owner was a special kind of person. I talked with him for 45 minutes just enjoying his view on working and be amazed by how he run the business. It was totally not how I would do things but I liked hearing a businessman talking passionately about everything he build up. 5 minutes into talking with him I discovered this wasn’t going to be a match at all. But hey why walk away if you enjoy the talk? I managed to avoid specific questions of him but I think my reactions gave away that I doubted some of his statements…

What I learned from this is that although I enjoy talking I have a business to run. I think I was a bit vague because I wanted the talk to go on, but if it is so clear there is no fit I should just state that.
I want to do work to my liking, he wants to have people that work to his liking: no match, no hard feelings. That is where intakes are for.

In hindsight I think I hoped he magically turned out to a good fit if I just understood him more or he sees my added value. But in contrary, as the talk continued the strangeness of the questions increased and I just could not hide being amazed by the boldness of his requirements.