Improving Your Work Flow

As a developer, and even now as a manager, I’ve learned that there aren’t enough hours in the day to learn all of the little features built into your tools. So many of them are special corner-case items that during a review of them, you end up wondering why such features exist. But, every now and then, you come across a gem or a way of using a feature that can significantly change how you perform your daily tasks.

There are a variety of ways to pick up those little tips and tricks. There’s even a variety of book series associated with learning them.  My favorite is observational learning.

If you work in any type of collaborative environment, you often find yourself asking or being asked questions regarding how to do something or help in solving a problem.  When you watch others demonstrate a problem or solution, look beyond the problem at hand.  See how they use all the other tools around them.  How do they find files?  Where do they search for answers?  How do they search for answers?  As a developer, how do they trouble shoot a problem; use their editors; use their debugger?

Compare those activities to your own work flow.  Avoid looking for just big wins.  Focus on iterative improvement.  Don’t hesitate experimenting with something new.  By picking up little efficiencies and experimenting with your work flow, the big gains will appear over time.

Thank you to my colleague Jill Majors for a variety of blog posting suggestions, and to Seth Godin for the article that inspired this one: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/time-for-a-workflow-audit.html.

Jim Rush is a Product Development Manager for Syntellect’s Voiyager product line. When he’s not busy creating new features for Syntellect, Jim enjoys woodworking.