Tech

After reading the book the Goal , I went after the next reading, and I was recommended to read The Mythical Man-Month, from Fred Brooks. This book is a computer science class, which I didn’t know yet, that describes the software development life cycle in the 70s.

The book’s main subject is told at the title: the mythical man-month. Man-month is a productivity metric like the ones that are used today, such as points, t-shirts size or whatever that is being used. The argument is the metric is failed and number of tasks, line of codes or features developed by someone aren’t constant between projects.

At the end of 2023, my squad started its most important project. I assumed the project leadership role, organizing the project, coordinating the meetings, the release process, etc. At the first months, the project went well, as we took some hard decisions, proved a couple of concepts, and started the rollout for the first phase.

However, I always felt that I was holding the team back and being a bottleneck in the whole team. At a 1x1 with the head of the area, I told him about my frustration and got this answer back:

When I chose to pursue a career in computer science when I was 15 years old, it was basically on liking math and physics. I want to distance myself from writing posts, essays, etc. Time goes by, and now, one of the things that I value at a mature company or team is the existence of technical documentation.

Docs help us to gain historical knowledge of our company, reevaluate decisions, and comprehend the trade-offs between all the decisions. It is also beneficial for the newcomers because it tells them a story. The richer in detail it is, the better it is.