¿Qué es On The Topic?

He hecho 3 entradas que tienen en su título "On The Topic" en mi blog y hablan de cosas muy diferentes. Ken inculcó una necesidad en mi de ordenar mis escritos y On The Topic es prueba de ello.

El título es una frase inglesa la cual no estoy seguro de que tenga mucho sentido gramaticalmente. Voy a usarla para hablar de cosas que sean relevantes en el momento que lo esté escribiendo. Más que nada será una sección de temas más profundos o controversiales, porque me encanta dar mi opinión sobre todo lo que pasa a mi alrededor. Si quieres pelearte sobre un tema, la sección de comentarios de esta serie será un lugar indicado, aunque preferiría frases respetuosas informadas, pero es el Internet, y la posibilidad del anonimato está abierta para todos.

Continuaré esta serie hasta el final de 2017 y en 2018 ya veremos qué más haré con este blog. Por el momento tengo pensadas otras 2 series para el año y espero que alguien me acompañe en este medio.

The Survivors of the Software Industry (Last Entry).

Ken gave us the opportunity to know 15 people from the Computer Science Industry of Guadalajara. Most of them were nice, and they gave us actual tips to become better on our area. Of course, we live in Guadalajara, and we had to have a misogynistic speaker and another one who believed he was the best human in the world, but I am grateful for the other 13, men and women that reminded me why I'm studying Computer Science and that gave me hope on myself to develop on this area.

Project Management is something I've always been good at. Ever since high school, I became involved in Grupos Estudiantiles, I was president of one, and I was in charge of logistics of 5 or 6 across my Tec Life. I have been part of huge events such as congresses, hackathons, and impactful projects, and now that I think about my life, I think that's exactly what I like to do with my time. All of those things, I did them because I like to do those. I wasn't getting paid, and I slept less just to create the best event possible, and I didn't mind it.

I hope I can become a project manager on my near future, and I would like to thank Ken for giving me the opportunity to know so many wonderful people on his course. 

Surviving at the Software Industy (15-17) - Create Your Day Of The Black Sun and Win The War.

The Day Of The Black Sun is an event that only happens when they have a full sun eclipse. For 8 minutes, no one can fire bend and that's the moment when team Avatar was planning to invade the Fire Nation and to dethrone the Fire Lord. Little did they know their plan was already discovered by Azula so it all became a test for later, when Aang would really fight against the Fire Lord.

As a project manager, you have to find ways to test your project on a controlled environment. Testing is a powerful tool that allows us to see what we're doing right, and what needs to be fixed. You can test every single aspect of your system by using a test plan. If we are strategic, we can achieve to win on this stage.

Even if our tests do show that we have some errors, we can fix them on proper time and release the project on time. Aang had of fight against the Fire Lord before the Suzan's Comet arrived, and he actually manages to defeat him, this only happened because he was prepared, he had a team and he followed his plan.

Surviving at the Software Industy (14) - Now You Can Water Bend.

Katara is the last water bender from the water tribe of the South Pole. She didn't have the opportunity to learn when she was a child because she didn't have a teacher. When she meets Aang, they decide together that they will go to the North Pole and find a teacher that will show them the arts of the water bending.

She knew how to do the basic stuff, and maybe she didn't do it the right way, but on his journey with the Avatar, she became a very powerful master and she was the one that taught Aang how to water bend at the end. Just as Katara, now we are able to start our code bending. We have to follow a well-defined standard and being able to integrate our code together.

At this stage we have to have an order, and start by constructing the skeleton of the project while informing what is going on with it, and documenting all the changes that had to be made. As a PM he have to be aware of the milestones, and how the project is coming up.

I always wanted to water bend, but to code bend, that's a gift that not everyone has.

Surviving at the Software Industy (13) - Focusing your Sokka.

I just saw Avatar: The Last Airbender again, and that reminded me how good of a series this is. My last entries will feature this series instead of movies because that's the only thing I can think about right now (haha!).

This stage is all about reviewing and making better the documents of the architecture of the project. Sokka is the strategist of Aang's team, he's the one that creates and reviews the plans and schedules for the team to follow. His name comes from the Japanese "sokka" that means "understood".

The Team Avatar is constantly preparing to fight a war, and they have to go and talk to the two big nations that still live and to be sure their plan is good. They first go to the North Pole and talk to the strategists there. They have a fight and win, but when they go to Ba Sing Se on the Earth Kingdom, things don't go very smoothly, and they lose control of the capital. As a PM, you have to be sure this doesn't happen, you can't lose control over a team, by reviewing every part of your Design Document.

In one episode, Sokka tries to explain the plan to the army that will be invading the Fire Nation, but he is pretty unsuccessful on doing that, he's getting nervous and even if he has a well established plan, he's not helping the team to comprehend it. If you make a perfect document, but no one is able to read it, then you're doing something wrong.

If you can have a detailed document, you can be sure that every part of the architecture will be covered correctly.