codeblog: okay, now we’re coding; what about fixing the process?

This week’s coding adventure at Sailthru was fairly similar to last week, but my workload was much more varied in terms of coding HTML emails vs. actual programming (i.e. using Sailthru’s scripting language, Zephyr). I spent quite a bit more time digging through Sailthru’s dev docs to find solutions to programming challenges in order to add content and user data to a variety of email templates.

getting it done
Overall, I also felt much more “in the groove” this week. I definitely feel like I’ve found my stride and I actually impressed myself at how much I was able to get done. More specifically, it felt good to able to code a new html email template from scratch while simultaneously incorporating Sailthru’s programming language for client content (side note: we’ve typically been focused on one of those things….either building the html or adding programming bits to existing templates). As such, I am already finding some ways that we can be a bit more efficient in our overall process, which was one of the main themes of the week.

now, how to improve process & workflow
As the overall workload has started to really ramp up, we’re starting to hit up against some inefficiencies with workflow and overall process. As I am a bit of an efficiency nut, I spent a lot of time thinking and talking about that this week. A week ago, I took on the role as a bit of the project manager, helping track projects in list form. That has helped in terms of tracking progress and project status. However, the processes for onboarding new client projects and for doing revisions could still use a lot of work. In a sense, we need a bit more of a Product Mgmt-type approach to set-up of new projects (mainly in the form of detailed specs and a list of exactly what needs to be done and when). I hope to discuss this in more detail with the team next week, so we can start optimizing some of workflow before our next big projects begin (rather than doing so after we’re already knee-deep in the work).

error, error, error
One other theme of the week was related to some issues with Sailthru’s admin panel and data feeds. While testing out my code for a variety of projects, I kept getting a ton of timeout errors, making it almost impossible to make sure my code in the emails was working properly. These sorts of issues are quite common in the coding world, so I just had to deal with it. The main frustration was that it was inconsistent. If something is down or just broken, then you can usually move onto another project or find something else to do. But, when you really want to get something done, and you can sometimes get it to work, it is almost more frustrating than when something’s just not working. It’s sort of like the comparison of standstill traffic vs. stop-and-go. Personally, I find that the inconsistency of stop-and-go traffic can often be more frustrating then just standing still (but maybe that’s just a result of driving a manual transmission for so many years?).

So overall, the week was a bit up and down, with a variety of frustrations being followed by little wins and successes, but generally feeling good about getting shit done. And just to keep the silliness going, here’s an animated gif breakdown of how the week was:

504 error? oy: