Checklists on paper are underrated and fancy tools, almost always, overrated. Back to jotting down on paper JIRAs that need action on priority, dependencies that need follow-up, and tasks for self that need focus time. One good thing about working with hand-written and crossed out lists is timeboxing that happens as a side-effect - a visible fixed list means, implicitly, work is siloed.

Allen Holub made an interesting quote during the course of a talk that struck a good chord. Scrum is basically a wrapper put around Extreme programming in order to make it more palatable for management. One of the initial discussions I had with our QA lead a few months back was to put in a discipline of all stakeholders discussing pre-sprint. A la a CEO pitching their making-the-world-a-better-place product and VCs taking their time to get back with feasiblilty and PMF questions, product owners pitch and technical stakeholders assess and get back.

One of the concerns about a water body like a dam is how well maintained the sluices are. And one should add to it, how well the pressure safety valves are engineered. Encountered yet another of our current stacks’ concerns today - a singular GraphQL-esque end point with no isolation. Add to the mix, a not so well thought handling of connections and we had a good CPU spike. Second day in a row dealing with database concerns isn’t a welcome Independence day.

Inching in some sense towards a freedom; another I’m trying to free is our APIs’ hackiness. Spent a bit on a vlog series that focuses on a new OS/language development. A couple of ideas to provide a slim, robust layer for GraphQL/REST APIs to restrict queries/mutations. Smaller steps from the past looking back.