Dirty Work

Developers like to write code, that’s what they do. But being a software professional means working on a number of other tasks, some of which are decidedly un-fun. The wise developer recognizes the importance of these tasks and approaches them with no less effort than their more enjoyable work. Grooming a task list. Writing documentation. Cleaning up repositories. Slogging through a naming refactor to improve consistency. She knows that these will all pay off in the long run.

Yesterday I spent nearly 10 hours working in JIRA, getting my head around nearly 150 tasks that need to get done in the next 3 weeks. Circumstances had forced me to be pretty heads-down in dev-world the past couple months, and my planning responsibilities had fallen by the wayside. I owe the team more than haphazard and vague requirements, and this is the first step to doing better. Here’s to a full July!