Articles for category: Delivery

12 months ago

Greg Thomas

The Final Software Push

I recently had to do one of those “delivery sprints in a week” things because something went wrong and we had to fix it. Long days, long nights, early mornings first trying to figure out what went wrong and then coming up with a solution to fix it and of course then having to test it to make sure you didn’t screw anything up in your rush to fix it. I don’t do as many of these last pushes as I used to, but they are part of the job, and they never go away. Just like any job, there

12 months ago

Greg Thomas

Where You Belong

There is a place where you might not be just yet, where you could be, but just haven’t come to realize it. It’s the place where you belong. Whether it’s work or life, you might not be there just yet, you might be on the path to getting there, but being there right now – no – it’s not time. But if you give up looking, if you stop working towards it, you will never find it. Don’t stop looking.

12 months ago

Greg Thomas

You Can’t Compete with Memories

No matter how hard you try, you can never, ever recreate a memory. It exists at a point in time, not only reflected by the location but your age, your mood, how you were feeling that day, who you were surrounded with. You can’t recreate those moments. You can’t put all those elements into a bottle and hope that lightning will strike twice. You can create new ones, from new variables, new ideas or new components. But the best thing about memories is that they will always be unique to that exact moment in time.

12 months ago

Greg Thomas

The Long Drive

Long drives (trips not golf)  are about one thing only – can you go the distance? Can you maintain your focus over 5 hours? Can you keep your cool when things go wrong after 10 hours? Can you keep the team on point after 17 hours? Can you take a break when the finish line is close, but not everyone is at their best? Can you, yourself, keep pushing forward, eyes wide open, not kept alive by caffeine and candy? That’s what you get from doing a Long Drive – you figure out what you can do.

April 22, 2025

Greg Thomas

The Bigger Picture

When fixing something small, don’t forget to step back and look at the bigger picture. Does this apply elsewhere? Can we make this better in other parts of our software? What is the impact of deploying this elsewhere? What if as part of this work, we start building a framework that we can keep building on? Fix the immediate problem, don’t get lost in the forest, and plan for the next iteration. You wouldn’t put a cast on your  arm in case you break it next week but you would think twice about that next jump.