Shhhhhhh! If you sit quietly you can almost hear me sigh in relief
to a nicely paced start of the week. Last week was very long and gruelling
involving a lot of late nights in the office trying to finish off a project
which had a tight schedule.
Ok, so let’s start from the beginning. I did a short course
on Windows Phone 7 development at the end of last year and I when I got back to
work after the Christmas holidays I was immediately informed of an upcoming
project on WP7. You can imagine my excitement as I have been really keen to
join such a project to the point where each time I sent an email to scheduling
about upcoming projects the email had such a line “…if there are any WP7
projects please please please let me know”. I also made a point to join WP7
projects alongside those scheduled for me. Volunteering to test or adding small
features nothing major but a great platform to learn from.
Finally got onto this project and boy was it at the deep end! Be careful
what you wish folks because you just might get it. The project had a rather
tight schedule and involved a lot of Sprints(Agile Methodology). These sprints
made getting work done a bit of a task as some of the designs were still being
changed as I was coding. In a way the tight schedule and the fact that I was
given something totally new made the project even more challenging and in doing
so I had to force myself to quickly grasp some of the ideas about object
oriented programming concepts in relation to WP7 that I have been contending
with for a while. With the deadline looming I called in some reinforcement to
help me out as there was no leeway on the deadline. I had a WP7 Pro come to my rescue.
I learned a lot more in a week than I would have in a month by collaborating
with Mr WP7 Pro. Just because I was working with a Pro does not mean the Bee is
now a Pro, although I am working on that. I learned so much as well as things that made the process easier such as getting the flow of pages before dwelling down into the
data binding of the project and a lot of other WP7 specifics that the
device emulator can and cannot do. The project was handed off on Friday for
testing to another team so just about made the deadline.