Career goals for the next 6 months

It is interesting timing that Jason Haley tagged me about career goals. I just finished up a six month project that consumed all my time. The astute will notice my blog has been quite for a similar amount of time. Before I can define my future six month goals I need to digest what I learned/accomplished over the last six months:

Worked with Commerce Server API. Specifically profile, catalog, and order management sub-systems.

Full-blown development on virtual machines using VMware. Started out with Virtual PC but switched to VMware and have not looked back.

Agile development. Coordinated parallel development streams. Introduced development team to unit testing and TDD. Pair programmed, learned when it is a value-add. (Also learned how sweet VMs and terminal services can make pair programming with laptops.)

Performed countless branching and merges. A result of parallel development. Perforce, is a wonderful SCM tool.

Service enabled Commerce Server API using WCF. That sentence does not do the effort justice.

Learned VSTS and how to build load and web tests. For a first release VSTS is better than I expected. I need to a look at Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite Beta 2 to see where improvements have been made.

Tested SO Commerce Server framework using VSTS in a testing lab. Learned how vital performance testing, in a lab environment, is to the development process. This is a must do if a development team wants to learn the behaviors of their software! There are many performance/load testing tools on the market but for a developer's usage I feel VSTS is superior. Its Visual Studio so the learning curve for a dev is relatively low. Not to mention load and web tests are pretty much built from unit tests.

Analyzed and documented performance testing results. Actually spent a few days reviewing 4+GB of test result data and logs.

Developed some WCF best-practices (project layouts, namespacing, versioning pactices, proxy generation scripts).

10.

Worked with Vista. Famaliarized myself with Vista nuances.

11.

Re-enforced major testing principal - the author of the code must write the unit tests! During the last project the idea was to have a couple new developers to the project write some unit tests for a sub-system, which had no coverage, as a way to learn the code base under development. Not a horrible concept but a very time consuming effort. At times it was confusing for the devs trying to understand the behavior of code they are writing the tests for. That hints at another problem which could have been taken care of should the author of the code practiced TDD.

12.

Learned how difficult it is to develop a framework...

Goals
1.	Continue my quest for efficiency by practicing the Pareto Principal (80/20 principal). 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs. Focus my efforts on the 20% and eliminate the rest. Also, read Getting Things Done.
2.	Define and hone my current skillset. My current interests and focus are WCF, developing frameworks, TDD, and agile development. Over the next six months I will focus on these areas. Specifically I hope to capture and build upon the agile development principles that have worked for me. WCF related I want to dig into the internals. For many years I have tried to consume all the latest information only to do little with it. The shotgun appoarch to staying up on technology just isn't fun anymore.
3.	Write blog entries. At a bare minimum one entry per month. Wow, what high expectations! Writing blog entries has been hard for me in the past as I feel I have to be a SME (subject matter expert) to be worthy of discussing a topic. As many bloggers can attest this not the case. Stay tuned for more. There is lots floating around in my head and its time to get them out in words.
4.	Look into developing a product. Over the next six months I would like to create a few POCs to prove out some ideas. If they pan out maybe I will take the next steps.
5.	Do a presentation for a user group or Code Camp. I am long overdue to take the plunge into these waters. Enough said, action required.
6.	Catch up with individuals within my network. Find out what people are currently working on and their future plans. I have not taken the time to do this in a while.
7.	Learn more functionality provided by CodeRush and Refactor! Pro. These tools are key productivity enhancers. RefactorPro will be of special interest as I am currently only using a fraction of the refactorings available.

I just noticed that the above goals are all just detailed versions of my anual goals. I did not even try to do that. Guess that is proof that writing down your anual goals does commit them to your subconscious.

Published 01-08-2007 11:57 by gmckinley