Hi everybody!
My hunger for learning and discovering has driven me onto the surge of starting a new project and documenting it just like those old diaries people used to fill back in time with their experiences, wishes and learnings (ahem… Curie’s, Twain’s, Lister’s…). So, I’m so happy to announce that this is my very first very big project and my very first dev blog series!
With the big picture of what I want to achieve in my mind, uncertainty possesses me when it comes to making actual and real choices. I really enjoy making technical and product decisions but the tickling of a broad range of choices always makes me nervous. And I assure you this is a broad one. It is general knowledge that bad or uncertain choices in an IT project may cause delayments (not my case since I’m doing this as a personal project), economic loss (something I do not wish for) or even quitting the project (something I do not wish for AT ALL).
So, where do I start? 🤔
Doing a quick research, I have arrived to something called “Decision Journal” which, by now, seems to be my biggest ally in this quest.
And you may ask:
What on earth is a “Decission Journal”?
Well, even tho the name may seem (or at least, it looks like it to me) something very serious, in practice this is nothing more complicated yet simple than writing down in a paper all the possible ideas that may have come to you regarding your project. It can be as simple as a list or as complex as a matrix where you can calculate time, effort and money cost. Since I’m just starting this journey, I’m going to just focus on the initial and pretty much crucial first choices.
Tennant, by the time in writing this post, is an IoT + rest API + Device project so my very first technical choice is what kind of hardware I’m going to base the whole project. This decision is going to condition project’s language, the scope, the additional featuring range or even the size of the device so I must chose carefully.
Somebody brings me Taco, please
It is no secret that I love working with Trello boards. From agile developments to RPG campaigns’ structuring, they absolutely fit my way of thinking and organizing and I really really really like using them. So, why don’t locate my “Decision Journal” onto a board?
How can you not love this dog?
I’m going to work with a card template holding color-coded tags to classify the aspect questioning, some custom fields to add the option first-consideration date and the mood about it, a detail description and some text regarding where does this option going to lead me and why. I’m going to keep it easy and simple, so documenting choices don’t take longer time than actually making them real. Along this, I will work with 4 operative and self-defined columns: Choice Pool, Current decision, Option chosen and Discarded.
My card template for decision-making. Yikes.
Please feel free to use this method if it seems to go along with your work manners. Anyway, I will keep you updated about how is this working for me and about any improvement I make over this method.