WordCheck postmortem

WordCheck postmortem

The Concept

At my (cpeel's) employer, after releasing a project a postmortem is conducted. And no, we don't physically sacrifice someone every time we release a project (although sometimes you feel like a zombie after a projects escapes out the door). The purpose is to get all the project players together (marketing, sales, development, test, beta-test managers, documentation) and to discuss how things went. Some types of questions that are asked are:

• While working on the project, what worked well?
• What didn't work well?
• What should we do again?
• What would we do differently?

In addition, managers give out kudos to the folks whos effort went above and beyond. Sometimes the kudos even come with financial compensation.

The Application

Please keep in mind that we're here to discuss how the WordCheck process went, not to critique WordCheck itself. For those requests, please post your thoughts in one of the following forum threads: WordCheck development: PM interface, WordCheck development: Proofer interface, Experience and opinions of the new WordCheck, or WordCheck defects.

Discussion

What worked well?

• From what I hear from other, more experienced, PGDP coders and site admins, WordCheck had a much more vigerous discussion and test effort than previous feature additions. I think there was some very active (and in some cases impassioned) participation in the threads which demonstrated that people were interested in the feature and what it might do for the site. -- cpeel
• jmdyck's WordCheck pre-release wiki page was great in capturing things discussed in the forums and the status of those items. It didn't set a hard and fast rule of what was going to be included in the final WordCheck, but it did give us a list of items and direction to work towards. -- cpeel

What didn't work well?

• Someone (garweyne?) said that the biggest problem was that we dropped too much new code at one time. Looking back I agree. We might have had better community support and feedback if we had done smaller incremental releases in production rather than dropping two fairly large releases (PM part and Proofer part) within a week of each other. -- cpeel
• The forum discussion was great for generating thoughts but not so great for capturing the big picture of what we were trying to do to a newcomer. -- cpeel
• Not all DP members were aware of the Wordcheck development going on, or aware of the current state of development. -- Pijuvwy

What would we do again?

• I thought the comaradarie between those brave and tenacious enough to follow the ever-winding discussion thread was great. I think folks felt free to say what they thought about the directions being taken and felt like their comments were valued. -- cpeel

What would we do differently?

• I think for the next large project we need to keep the forum discussion but to also have a wiki page that parallels that discussion. It can include stuff like what the overall objective is for that feature, what the objective isn't, who are the key 'customers' of that feature, etc. It could also be used to track the status of the project. -- cpeel
• Frequent Announcements in the forums to advise the current state of the development, and to invite people to test the product. -- Pijuvwy
• We really needed a project manager. It became more evident that without a solid direction we'd be suffering from feature creep for months. Because the development affected the entire community, no one wanted to lay down the law and say 'this is how it is going to happen'. Instead, everyone kept hands-off. Next time the feature needs a project manager, or if that sounds too much like a dictator, maybe a 'digital midwife' to usher and guide the development. -- cpeel

See Also (on WordCheck)

• WordCheck PM Interface Enhancements
• WordCheck Proofer Interface Enhancements
• WordCheck Engine Enhancements

Kudos

To my knowledge, PGDP doesn't have a way to financially compensate folks, but kudos should still be passed around.

jmdyck

• In a word - WOW. After the initial posting about my prototype, in which jmdyck must have saw at least a gimmer of worth, he rolled up his sleaves and jumped right in. He has a knack for effective abstraction and modularity which allowed for efficient code reuse. He single-handedly rewrote a large part of my initial code while reworking and enhancing it. He was great at answering my questions about PGDP development procedures, obtuse areas of the code, pointing out better ways of doing things, and being responsive in the forums. I'm certain he was more than a little peeved with me at times but did a great job of ushering me in the right direction instead of Chastizing From On High which he probably had every right to do. WordCheck would never exist without him. -- cpeel

garweyne

• garweyne did an excellent job of making concrete and implementable suggestions in all aspects of WordCheck, both from a Proofer's perspective, a PM's perspective, and a PF's perspective. Sometimes the suggestions were quite a challenge to implement but there was no question he had thought through what he was asking and considered it worth the effort. garweyne, along with big_bill, was key in mathematically identifying words for the site's Possible Bad Word lists for multiple languages. Many thanks garweyne! -- cpeel

big_bill

• big_bill was not only key in the creation of the site Possible Bad Word lists but provided great insight to the discussion during WordCheck development. It was several of big_bill's posts (in addition to posts by garweyne and others) that got me motivated to start hacking on the old spellcheck code to begin with. Kudos big_bill! -- cpeel

kraester

• I'm a coder and a hacker, not a writer. Moreover, I'm obviously a technical person who groks how things work behind the scenes and sometimes has a hard time explaining them to less technical people. kraester has no such problem! She has a phenominal way of taking my oft-unintelligable ramblings and making them clear to others. She was instrumental in Proofer and PM interface development, writing (and rewriting) huge chunks of the WordCheck FAQ, testing the seemingly unending code versions that were released in my sandbox, and, most importantly in my opinion, fielding questions in the forums both before, during, and after deployment on what was going on and why. Oh, and did I mention this was all while fielding actual Real Life tasks with her publisher? kraester, you rock! -- cpeel

DESiegel60

• Much like kraester, DESiegel60 was instrumental in the final WordCheck feature set. He was wonderful about making timely responses to my questions in the forum and making suggestions to some of my often poorly thought out implementations. He frequently hacked, tweaked, and massaged my weak writings into something useful. He responded to numerous forum posts about WordCheck during the development to thread newcomers, answered questions after the deployment, and acted as a general advocate for folks who couldn't look past some of WordCheck's initial warts to what we were trying to do. Thank you DESigel60! -- cpeel

Cpeel

• Over-modest, but hardworking (that's greatly understated!) at the coding. Very responsive to suggestions during testing. Also, Cpeel created this wiki section, which should improve the process in future. -- Pijuvwy