Sometimes you want to do something stupid, something you will regret a long while – this challenge is such a case for me.
The Idea
Yahtzee Crowshaw of Zero Punctuation fame went on an endeavour of creating 12 games in 12 months. So now he created 4 out of his 12 games and is well on track.
One of the reasons he wanted to do this series was to refocus. Most of the projects were too big, and he wasn’t able to finish them. So he tried to start something small.
I have a similar problem I have a lot of ideas, and most of them are little to big for me to make them. I start a lot of projects, and then I give up.So I thought, Why not try to steal his idea?
The Challenge
Since October, I want to create 12 small programs that will help with either testing or automation. One application per month.
Why am I talking about it now? Cause I want to share the ruleset, that I will be using. Maybe you spot some issues that I should address before starting.
The ruleset
- I have time from 1st of the given month to last day to create and release a working program.
- At the beginning of the month, I will make a post explaining my idea for the program.
- At the end of the month, I will make another post showing off the program.
- The app will be either available to download from my GitHub or will be deployed somewhere.
- Participation in hackathon counts -as long as I was working at it as developer not tester.
- The criteria that it has to be helpful for testers or with automation counts.
Things I haven’t yet decided.
- I am thinking about making some monetary incentive. I think I will go with a donation to charity for each finished project. Maybe 100 pln?
- I am thinking about irregularly steaming my code writing. It will be probably on my „dead” youtube channel.
Possible challanges on the road.
I see a lot of potential issues here.
- Deadlines are strict, and there is so much time in months
- Excellent time management is critical.
- I don’t want to break my other habits: Regular Exercising, walking the dog, writing a blog post, making conference talks.
- Proper Selection of topics will be mandatory.
- The quality of code won’t be up to my standards, looking at tight deadlines; it means I will have to take a lot of shortcuts.
- I don’t plan to make perfect applications. I will be happy with MVP or even PoC. If for some reason one app will get the traction I will think later about developing it into a full-fledged program.
Last but not least:
Why am I not starting in September? Sadly I need to do some rearranging my schedule. Plus I have two workshops and one conference in September, which cost me my precious time.
Since I started this blog, I participated in two challenges:
Mot Api Testing Challange, 52 books in a year challenge and To some degree my 300 series was also a challenge.
We will see how this one will go.
Interesting idea! May I suggest extending criteria from „helpful for testers” to „helpful for quality improvements”? A year is a long period with uncertainties, so by extending a criteria you won’t be too locked into „standalone thingy for testers” and could do something smaller like a linter plugin.
I think – we define „helpful for testers” a little diffrent cause one of my idea is a linter plugin – that deals with method chaining 🙂
I selected „helpful for testers” cause i wanted to tackle at least one non quality issue. Something that is more for humans, something that can resolve one of our annoyance as team members but won’t affect quality of code.
But you made me realize that my other idea wont work since one my ideas is a tool that would actually help developers with qualty. But wouldn’t affect testers per see. So in my goal it would not work.
So Thanks too you I think I will go with „helpful for quality improvements or for testers in general” – what you you think?
I think it’s great! Good luck and patience =)
On side note, I didn’t receive any notification about your reply, is it supposed to be sent?