Continuous Improvement: Day 2
Just a short post tonight. It was a long, hectic day, and I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
Day two on my journey of Continuous Improvement saw me getting one of my team’s projects set up to automatically build through TeamCity. After fixing a couple project reference issues, I was able to get our public website project building. We use the Visual Studio 2008 Web Site model; we do not precompile the project in any way before deploying to production. This caused a problem in TeamCity. This is because the Build target for Web Site Projects doesn’t do anything. Instead I had to set the build target to Publish. This causes the web site to be precompiled. I did this all on my lunch break :) I’ve recommended to my manager that he include the cost of an enterprise license in his budget for the next fiscal year.
Once I got the automated build working, I was wicked excited. I spoke with a fellow Senior Developer and our Lead Analyst about what I had accomplished. Both were equally excited. they basically had the same thing to say:
We know our current process is broken. I’m glad you’re doing something about it.
Rock on!
I gave my manager a quick update on what I’ve accomplished so far. He was equally excited. Then he asked the million dollar question:
Does what you have done require your team members to change their workflow?
To which I happily replied: No. This was the right answer at this stage of the game. We’re shooting for low-to-no friction to get the ball rolling.
What I meant was: Not Yet! ;)
I’m presenting my work so far to the team tomorrow at our weekly meeting (note to self: include replacement of weekly, hour-long meeting with daily, 15-minute stand ups in future plans).