|^|

Just read a great article by J.D. Meir on his blog here. While I’ve always strived for the “4 day work week” in reality when working for a company we’re there to work 40 hours a week. Here’s  realistic breakdown of how to make that 40 hours a productive 40 hours.

I often used to fall into the trap of getting projects through on time and budget, but only through a ‘heroic effort’ of coding, bug fixing and clarifying scope ambiguity (which I always thought was normal). I’ve only in the past year really cut down the stress and wasted effort to get something across the line by instead approaching a project with a more reasonable and holistic methodology.

I do think a mindset change critical to achieving this, far too often we’re focused on a particular silo and not the end goal – regardless of our role in the team we need to think big picture.

I’ve also started reading a lot more on technical requirements gathering as done by SSW – a Microsoft software house in Australia. They host some good user groups sessions here in Sydney. So far I’m really impressed with the guides they’ve posted and I’m hoping to post some learning from them soon.