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5+ Secrets Time Estimation Hints in Project Management

Posted on February 17, 2023May 21, 2023 by Mark FeehilyComments Off

Having a clear understanding of time estimation is integral for successful project management. With the right technique, you can be confident that your estimates are exact and valuable to you and your team. Time estimation is the skill of predicting accurately how long a task will take to finish – using time estimation methods can help you eliminate the guesswork associated with your estimates and permit you to have more confidence regarding your time management and the period your work can be accomplished in.

While looking for time estimation methods for a project, you probably ask yourself: how to accurately determine the length of a project? How do you avoid overestimating the amount of time needed? How can the timetable of a project be managed more effectively? For successful project management and project completion, time estimation is a necessary step. So, if you’re looking for methods for the perfect time estimation required for your project, this article is for you.

In the world of project management, accurately estimating the time needed for a project is a difficult but necessary task. According to recent surveys, 78% of project managers need help with project time estimation. Furthermore, a Project Management Institute research underlined the necessity of precise time estimation, since projects that are delivered late or within a tight deadline can hurt the bottom line.

In this article, we’ll share our project manager Erik Kalmykov’s tips for accurately estimating how much time a project will take. We’ll also show you how to avoid common errors and manage project timeframes more effectively. You’ll have a better grasp of how to correctly estimate the amount of time spent on a project after this article, along with useful advice on how to manage project deadlines and avoid frequent errors.

What is Time Estimation?

Time estimation is about determining how long it will take to complete a project. It is an essential part of project management and can help project managers better plan, manage, and complete projects on time. Accurate time estimation allows project managers to plan for potential risks or delays and better estimate the resources and staff needed to complete the project.

Why are time estimates so important? Time estimations are important for several reasons. Providing a better knowledge of the resources and manpower required to execute the project, first aids in the better planning and management of projects by project managers. Additionally, it enables project managers to recognize possible hazards and delays and make plans on how to deal with them. Finally, precise time prediction enables project managers to better plan for the employees and resources required to finish the project, which helps them manage project budgets more effectively.

Types of Time Estimation

Expert Judgment

Utilizing the knowledge of others in a field where you lack experience is plain innovative business. We can’t all be experts in everything, after all. When it comes to time estimates, employing the expertise and knowledge of an expert to assist in establishing your estimates has extra advantages since the expert you contact will probably have helpful advice for the project as a whole and might be able to identify problems that have bedeviled similar projects in the past. Having a professional to help you make more accurate and reliable estimates can help you achieve your goals more efficiently and cost-effectively. By utilizing the expertise of an experienced individual, you can ensure that your goals are met on time and within budget.

Pros & Cons of Expert Judgment

Pros: The method enables the consideration of certain elements that cannot be taken into account by an automated analysis.

Cons: This strategy necessitates individual judgment. As a result, the outcome frequently exhibits bias.

Usage

Expert judgment is constructive for managers who lack knowledge and is most appropriate for big projects when quantitative estimation alone is insufficient.

Analogous / Comparative

It is possible to estimate how long it will take to complete a task or project by comparing it to similar ones. This approach concentrates on “analogous” or “comparative” reasoning to produce an estimate by drawing on knowledge and past experiences.

Pros & Cons of Analogous / Comparative Estimation

Pros: Comparative / Analogous estimation is one of the quickest and easiest methods for estimating resources.

Cons: It has a poor track record of accuracy and has a significant danger of incorrect results.

Usage

The method is particularly suitable for standard projects with comparable task requirements. To gain a rough idea of the number of resources needed, it is frequently utilized in the early phases of a project’s life cycle.

Parametric

Using a preset formula, a parametric time estimate is a technique for determining how long an activity or project will take to complete. This formula often requires the input of certain criteria, such as the number of individuals allocated to the work or project, the complexity of the task or project, and/or the level of competence of the persons involved.

Pros & Cons of Parametric Estimation

Pros: This method is reasonably accurate since it considers the complexity of the work or project as well as the skill level of the persons involved.

Cons: The parameters’ values may not always be accurately determined using this procedure, which takes longer than other methods. It also disregards any adjustments to materials, methods, or technology that can impact how long it takes to finish a task or project.

Usage

The parametric time estimation method works best on projects with standardized work bundles and repeated activities. Therefore, it works best in industries with lesser levels of inventiveness, where early in the planning phase, project parameters can be fairly simply estimated.

Top-down

The top-down methodology of project estimation is based on breaking down the project activities into major blocks, projecting how long they will take to complete, and summarizing the estimates. Once managers acquire more information during the latter stages of project planning, these generic, big blocks of project work may be divided into smaller parts and then estimated independently to provide more precise predictions.

Pros & Cons of Top-down Estimation

Pros: As it takes into account the difficulty of the work or project and the expertise of the persons involved, this method of estimating may be rather accurate.

Cons: It might be challenging to precisely divide the activity or project into manageable portions using this methodology, which takes more time than other approaches. The time needed to accomplish the activity or project is also not adjusted for advancements in technology, business practices, or material availability.

Usage

In project planning when quick outcomes are important, the top-down project estimating approach is widely utilized. It is most useful during the early stages of project planning when a rough and rapid estimate is required.

Bottom-up

Bottom-up estimation is a method for determining the price and time needed to complete a project by segmenting it into smaller jobs and estimating each one independently. For projects with several jobs or components that need to be estimated, this method is helpful.

Pros & Cons of Bottom-up Estimation

Pros: High result accuracy and little differences between resources that were estimated and used.

Cons: This method takes a lot of time, effort, and skill to master.

Usage

Large software development projects, where several activities and components need to be estimated independently, are the ones that most frequently employ bottom-up estimating. Other project categories, including building projects or significant industrial activities, can also adopt this strategy.

Three-point

Three-point estimation is a project management method for estimating the duration, cost, and resources needed to complete a project. An optimistic estimate, a pessimistic estimate, and a most likely estimate are all created using this process based on the idea of ‘triangulation’. The expected value of the project is then calculated from these estimates.

Pros & Cons of Three-point Estimation

Pros: Compared to most estimating procedures, which tend to concentrate just on one point throughout the computation process, the method is more complete. It is risk-oriented and aids managers in reducing the risk of budget and schedule overruns brought on by unanticipated circumstances.

Cons: Large volumes of data and careful attention to detail.

Usage

Software development and other large-scale initiatives frequently employ a three-point estimate. The time, expense, and resources needed to complete any project or assignment may also be estimated using this method.

Time Estimation Statistics in Project Management

In project management, timeline accuracy is assessed using time estimation statistics. They offer statistics on how close a project was to finish on time. Statistics on time estimation are utilized to pinpoint areas where the project may be improved upon as well as those where the project timetable was successful and precise. The number of activities finished on time, the number of tasks delayed, the number of jobs finished ahead of schedule, the time saved due to resource efficiency, and the time added due to unforeseen complications are all examples of time estimation statistics. These statistics can be used to determine if changes need to be made to the project timeline, or if additional resources need to be allocated to ensure the project is completed on time.

Why Are Accurate Time Estimates Crucial to Project Success?

The success of a project depends on accurate time estimates since they provide the project manager with a better understanding of the amount of time, effort, and resources required to complete the project. Additionally, they may be used by project managers to coordinate with key players and provide realistic goals for their team members. Accurate time estimates can help with resource allocation, on-time task completion, and project budget stability. Knowing how long the project will take to complete can help project managers make better decisions about how to distribute resources and manage deadlines. Accurate time estimates also serve to lessen the risk of project failure by providing a foundation for assessing progress and detecting possible concerns before they become serious difficulties.

Cost overruns

Cost overruns happen when a project goes above its allocated budget. Numerous factors, including inadequate project management, underestimating the number of resources required, and unanticipated scope changes, can lead to them. Cost overruns can be problematic for the project team since they can cause delays or even the complete cancellation of the project. Project managers should constantly develop precise time and cost estimates for their projects, as well as monitor development and make modifications as necessary, to minimize cost overruns. They should also ensure that their personnel is well-educated and prepared for any scope adjustments or unexpected issues. Finally, project managers should strive to create a culture of accountability and communication, so that any issues are identified and addressed before they become a major problems.

Tips for Estimating the Time needed to Implement a Project

Define your goals and objectives: Consider spending some time defining your aims and objectives before beginning the project estimating process. You may determine what has to be done and how long it should take using this information.

Break it down: Break your project down into smaller, more achievable activities that may be estimated independently after you have determined the general objectives.

Gather data: After you have divided your project up into smaller jobs, collect information for each one. This might consist of time estimates, cost estimates, and any other pertinent data that will enable you to estimate the project properly.

Assess risks: Consider the hazards involved with each activity when you assess them.

Compare estimates: Compare your estimates to industry norms and the estimates of other experts. This will assist you in ensuring the accuracy of your estimations.

Keep track of changes: Keep note of any scope or time frame modifications as the project develops and modify your estimations as necessary.

Get feedback: Ask for feedback from stakeholders and team members throughout the estimation process. This will help ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the estimates are realistic.

Summing Up

Time estimation is a crucial component of project management and may be the difference between a project being successful and staying within budget and timeline constraints. Project managers can predict the time required for any project with accuracy if they have the correct plan and methodology. Project managers may develop a time estimating plan that will help them manage their projects more effectively and assure successful project completion by using the advice provided in this article.

The post 5+ Secrets Time Estimation Hints in Project Management appeared first on Flatlogic Blog.

Driving Action and Communication in AWS Amplify Open Source Projects

Posted on February 7, 2023May 21, 2023 by Mark FeehilyComments Off

AWS Amplify is a complete solution that lets frontend web and mobile developers easily build, ship, and host full-stack applications on AWS, with the flexibility to leverage additional AWS services as use cases evolve. To build Amplify applications, customers typically use one of the open source Amplify libraries. At Amplify, we manage and build these open source projects on GitHub.

In the last year, the number of contributions across the Amplify projects has increased and the teams have scaled to meet customer needs while building across programming languages and frameworks. This necessitates a constant balance of collaboration with contributors and also flexible processes to continually move the projects forward. The goal is to provide a delightful experience for Front End developers building on AWS.

Open source is as much about relationships as it is about code. These relationships are being built anytime the team is collaborating with external contributors, developers, and customers at different touch points. A core element to facilitate open source is to facilitate relationships through consistent and transparent communication. There isn’t a clear, well-defined playbook for this. It requires iteration and continuous feedback from contributors to fine tune and make better. How we communicate can mean how the projects are planned, structured, and received by the developer community! And all of this may change over time!

In this post, we’ll cover some processes and tools that we’ve built and use at AWS Amplify to help build a vibrant and responsive open source community.

Organization

For context, an average of 35 external contributor pull requests (PRs) and 350 issues are opened each month on GitHub across the Amplify project repositories. In 2022, this equated to an 80% increase in issues and 66% increase in external contributor PRs from the previous year. An external contributor is any active contributor that is not a member of the Amplify GitHub organization. These projects range from the Amplify CLI to the client libraries like Amplify JS and Amplify UI. We also have a very active Discord server with over 19,000 members.

Along with the growth, it can be a cultural shift for both AWS engineers and customers to work in the open. Not every team member is used to working in public, and not all customers are used to working with AWS through GitHub or Discord.

Our ownership model is that each individual team manages their own repositories and is responsible for the project health and operations. This includes issue and Pull Request (PR) management, communication, and releases. This level of autonomy helps the projects move fast and remain flexible. As the service has grown, so has the need for standardization and operational tooling within each team.

Communication and transparency – reducing the time to response

The starting point for community is consistent communication and transparency. There are different elements to this and it fluctuates over time and as projects grow or slow in velocity. There is an expectation in open source software development that there is an ongoing dialog with the community. This may take the form of contributors helping on issue triage and workarounds, providing feedback on Request for Comments (RFCs), and submitting PRs. It could also be developers using the libraries and services within their applications.

In each of these scenarios, open communication is what helps to oil that machine. In open source, the goal is to determine an action for each issue, pull request, feature request, or question that is created. In most cases, proactive communication and quick responses in issues and PRs helps to determine this action faster. This also shapes the open source contributor experience. An external contributor is more likely to stay engaged in an issue thread or PR review if the maintainers are quick to respond.

Knowing this, we identified ways to reduce friction and make the experience better knowing that communication plays such a large role. These ways are:

Standardize the structure of the operational processes (GitHub issues labels, etc.)
Communicate as early and often as possible in response to open items (issues, PRs, etc.)
Proactively track updates on these items in order to follow up quickly

With these goals in mind, we had to operationalize processes to allow us to deliver on each. Thinking through this, two core themes surfaced:

Develop a consistent approach and cadence for communication
Reduce overall time-to-response (or action)

Tackling these first would improve the contributor experience and begin to strengthen our own internal culture. Once standardized, we could then proactively track open items and metrics.

Communications processes

How do we improve communication across our project? This is where that cultural shift comes in. Sometimes this requires changes to normal process and team communication to fully embrace working in the open. The project is always evolving and updating, including nights and weekends. Without a clear process to drive action, things can quickly begin to get missed.

The first task was to find the root cause of the communication friction points in a project repository. What are the communication touch points? At those points, where can automation help reduce friction and time to next action? The initial entry points to communication in a GitHub repository are:

A contributor is using the project and opens an item in the form of an issue, or
A contributor opens a PR to submit code for inclusion into the project

The team on-call engineers were initially shadowed to observe how they identified, and interacted with, new and updated issues and PRs. A common theme was that the context switching and frequent back and forth on these items was very time consuming and hard to track. After observing this same pattern across multiple projects, it was clear that the conversation should be streamlined.

We needed an efficient way to both remind the original posters of what is needed to help reproduce an issue and encourage them to also provide details. For each of these items, we had to determine the best way to expedite the path to action. Maintainers need to triage an issue to determine the next action to take. Maintainers also need to triage each pull request to determine if it aligns with the project and identify what the next steps are with respect to review and merge.

GitHub issue template forms to the rescue

We initially standardized the GitHub issue template forms across all of the Amplify projects after getting access to the Beta feature in early 2021. These forms are used each time a contributor opens an issue, pull request, or feature request in a repository. This allowed for more actionable conversations by collecting all of the required information up front. The goal of the form was to collect just the required information without introducing unnecessary friction for contributors. This is different from the original GitHub issue templates that allowed for more free-form data entry. With this approach, we were able to require standard information that had been found to be helpful in triaging issues while shadowing the maintainers. Here is a screenshot of a portion of the current GitHub issue form template in the Amplify CLI repository.

This is the form that is used to open new issues in the repository. It asks the user to check some boxes before opening an issue, such as whether they have installed the latest version of the Amplify CLI, searched for duplicate or closed issues, and read the guide for submitting bug reports. It also asks some open ended questions about the user’s environment.

As using the new form to file an issue became the standard, the starting point for communication became clearer, allowing future interactions on issues and PRs to be more direct. Through the structured nature and standardized collection of data fields, we were able to significantly improve the quality of our search results. This has helped to reduce duplicate issues (although they may still exist in some forms in older issues) and increase visibility and traction on current open issues and feature requests.

Standardization

As the Amplify project quickly grew, the operational processes needed to grow with it and remain consistent across teams. Repository standardization tools are typically templates used to structure a project when it is first created. The original templates are helpful but there is an ongoing challenge of maintaining, or changing, the structure over time as these dimensions change. To account for this, we created an open source repository audit tool that provides a declarative approach to keep certain items such as labels, project topic tags, and descriptions up to date.

The audit tool also includes a dashboard to provide insight into other items, such as GitHub actions, required links, and the number of good first issues. The required items are defined in a configuration file and each repository is checked against that structure. This is a simple but effective way to quickly check across all the projects without manually checking each project.

Repositories will change over time but we need to make sure that there is consistency in the core structure. For instance, new labels are added, some are removed. Or, the CODEOWNERs.md file needs updated. The audit tool queries the repository metadata and provides a self-service way for each team to check if the repo is in good standing as part of their standard operating processes or has fallen out of date and needs attention. This screenshot shows a portion of the audit tool for the Amplify JS repository. The green check mark next to the links indicates that these items are present in the repository.

We want customers to have a consistent entry point when landing in any AWS Amplify repository. This includes the same nomenclature and core labels to correctly communicate the lifecycle of issues and PRs. This screenshot shows the required labels section of the tool. The set of required labels is compared against the labels in the repository for any discrepancies.

Data and tooling – separating out external contributor events

To accurately gauge activities on issues and opened items, it was critical to determine whether events were initiated by someone on the Amplify team or an external contributor in order prioritize communication and the triaging process. Our triaging process involves troubleshooting or reproducing an issue by a project maintainer. We needed to isolate GitHub issue (and pull request) event data created by external contributors in a separate tool to support this effort.

To track this event stream from GitHub, we built serverless data processes using AWS Lambda to capture issues and PRs that have been updated, and then capture any new events (comments, labels, etc.) on the issues. The data allows for ad-hoc querying against events to isolate if activity is increasing in a certain area. This also helps teams to quickly spot items when there are lags in timezones or as team on-call rotations change. All of these queries take into account the active members of the Amplify organization to identify those events only triggered by external contributors.

Capturing this data has allowed us to build tools to proactively engage in open and closed issues. The following sections outline these tools.

Trending issues

With the external contributor data separated from Amplify team events, we are able to start tracking, in near real-time, issues that have an increased amount of activity within a given time period. One way has been to create a dashboard that highlights trending issues that are receiving increased activity from external contributors. This is used at the individual project level and also across all of the projects. This helps to identify cross-project themes that may be starting without constant, manual, checking of issues to see what has changed.

The trending dashboard only ranks issues based on the activity that they are receiving from external contributors within a given time period. It takes into account recent comments and the aggregate reactions on comments that are not created by Amplify maintainers. This provides a holistic view to the themes that contributors and developers may be experiencing across the entirety of Amplify without the noise of Amplify team comments.

This includes issues, both open and closed post triage when there’s already been communication. It’s important to track closed issues (that are not locked) to not miss any new comments or activity. Since the issue is closed, those comments may not be seen unless a team member happens to view the issue. This screenshot shows the trending list of open issues in the Amplify CLI repository. The list of issues and aggregated metadata (number of comments and reactions) only includes data from external contributors.

Closed issues with increased activity

As previously mentioned, closed issue visibility is a challenge since it’s difficult to track which closed issues were updated and their specific changes – new comment, increase in number of reactions. The trending dashboard also tracks this activity.

The dashboard is especially useful for issues that are already closed that may continue to receive events. Without automation, it’s very time consuming (and manual) to identify an increased spike in reactions or external contributor comments on issues across one project, let alone over 20. Often times in projects, these comments go unnoticed unless an Amplify team member is tagged or subscribed to a specific item and happens to see the notification.

Having a UI that highlights these items also helps to reduce notification fatigue. The Amplify team (engineers, product, and developer experience) receive many notifications across items for many of the Amplify repositories. It is helpful to have a single dashboard to spot check if activity has increased on an older, closed issue.

Metrics to track

So how do we know that all of these processes and tools are making a positive impact? A few key metrics helped:

Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) – This measures how responsive we are to customers and encourages communicating as soon as possible once an issue or Pull Request is opened.

Mean Time to Close (MTTC) – This measures the overall timeframe that it takes to close an issue or Pull Request.

The definition of these metrics used with the constant stream of event data has allowed us to track the MTTC and MTTR of items at the repository and organization level.

MTTR is primarily about response times. How quickly do we respond back throughout the lifecycle of an issue (or PR)? A lower MTTC indicates that issues are closed faster. This may mean a few things: Maintainers have answered questions, reproduced issues, and actioned PRs. There are a lot of factors that contribute to an item being closed, which may have varying timelines. One example is feature requests that may remain open longer than a normal issue. There are caveats to each metric, but this helps to isolate issues that need further investigation.

Even with the progress in tracking, a few consistent challenges presented themselves. The back and forth communication on issues can be very sporadic. The next step was to isolate which issues and PRs needed a response.

Pending response

It’s difficult and time consuming to keep track of comment responses in issues and PRs utilizing only the notifications view within GitHub. One mechanism to keep track of this is identifying items that were awaiting a response and the original poster has now followed up (i.e. responded).

The ideal flow is something like this:

Issue is opened
Team responds with follow up or questions
Issue is labeled pending-response

A dashboard displays issues that have the pending-response labels AND an external contributor has responded

This helps reduce active response times and highlights when issues have received a reply. Additionally, this ensures that issues are actioned and don’t remain in an unknown state (i.e. not triaged) while awaiting a reply. Similar to the trending issues above, the team created a dashboard to surface any issue that fit this criteria. This screenshot shows the list of issues that need a response from the maintainers. These issues all have the pending-response label and an external contributor has been the most recent to comment.

Conclusion

Open source is not static. Tools, teams, and community are always evolving and what is working today will certainly change over the next year. Working backwards from consistency and communication has allowed Amplify to focus attention on prioritizing proactive action to make it a pleasant experience for community members to contribute to the projects.

We continue to identify more efficient ways to strengthen the developer relationships and facilitate more open communication across the Amplify repositories. As the community and project evolve, it’s important to remain flexible, communicate early and often, and continue to improve what the team can control.

Interested in learning more about open source at AWS Amplify? Follow @AWSAmplify on Twitter to get the latest updates about the Amplify Contributor Program, explore the open source Amplify GitHub repositories, or join the Amplify Discord server.

How to Improve Developer Productivity? [Guide]

Posted on May 10, 2022May 21, 2023 by Mark Feehily0

You work as a developer or software engineer and sometimes you feel tired, procrastinating and not satisfied with your effectiveness at work. It is a common thing for many developers because web-development is hard work that requires a lot of concentration and brain tension.

In this article we are going to discuss 10 recommendations on how to make the development work more efficient and how to improve developer productivity!

But first, let’s clear up what productivity means?

What is Productivity? How Can it be Measured?

Productivity means that you get more work done with the same resources or during the same period of time. Different companies can use different tools and metrics to measure developer productivity. Usually it is based on how many lines of code, features, or tasks a developer could do. For example, you can use as metrics quantity of lines of code, code reviews, bugs fixed, number of commits, finished tasks, or number of deployments or releases. You should also keep in mind that measuring developer performance requires more transparency in products and processes. The way of measuring what your manager or company chooses can depend on objectives, business goals, size and structure of the company and so on. It can also be team or individual measuring. But anyway, the main idea is to improve these metrics by improving developer productivity.

How can we describe modern IT developers?

Also, before we start discussing recommendations on how to improve developer productivity, we would like to define the audience.

Ten or fifteen years ago, when we discussed developers or software engineers, we would have imagined socially awkward, stereotypical geeks, similar to the main heroes from classic IT series and movies like Silicon Valley, The IT Crowd and so on.

But nowadays this stereotype is fading into reality. Now we can find absolutely different people working in web-development. We are going to propose common tools that can be useful for all types of personalities (and even not only for developers!).

The IT sphere is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. The quantity of employees is significant. According to statista.com, the number of full-time employees increased from 52 million in 2019 to 65 million in 2022. And the demand for IT professionals is still growing! And the level of professionals and competition for a good offer are also high. So you should do your best to improve your skills and productivity at work. We are going to help you with this! So here goes!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126677/it-employment-worldwide/

Find below 10 tips on how to improve developer productivity:

1. Develop yourself first!

It may sound like a banal piece of advice, but it is absolutely effective and true. If you want to be a productive developer, you have to increase your base of professional knowledge, commercial experience and so-called hard skills. Deep knowledge of your stack, tools, libraries and so on will help you to find the right solutions faster and easier.

But what is more important to all developers is their fundamental knowledge. You can go deeper into algorithms, systems architecture, or devopsing. And a good understanding of these things will definitely help you to feel more confident at any project you work on.

Stay a constant learner all your life to keep your brain working at the most productive level!

2. Create an optimal environment

The ideal developer workspace may look different for everyone, but the basic idea is to minimize distractions and make it comfortable for you.

Working on the beach with a laptop looks perfect only in pictures on social networks. In fact, an ergonomic workspace with a desk, a quality chair, and proper lightning is crucial for developers!

What is most important in your working environment is the right hardware! For all IT-specialists and especially for developers equipment plays a significant role in making their workspace convenient and their work productive.

Don’t forget about your online workspace. It is worth mentioning that there are also tools which are not software-related, but can help you much with planning, organizing and managing your performance, tasks and habits. Some of the most common project management and time tracking systems are Jira, Asana and Trello. There are also tools like F.lux to help reduce eye strain while looking at screens. There are plenty of other applications and tools to improve developer productivity and make your work more comfortable and efficient. Just if you feel like you need to improve something in your working environment at the office or your home office, be free to ask your manager and justify the importance or try to improve it yourself. Optimal workplace helps to improve developer productivity and performance as well!

3. Decrease the quantity of distractions

If you ask developers what is the most annoying thing for them, most will answer that it is getting interrupted in the middle of a difficult working process. Because after being distracted, it is hard to catch that flow again. But distractions can be everywhere and affect everyone. So how can we avoid them?
One of the first and easiest ways is to turn off notifications in messengers and applications. You can read messages when you’re ready for a break. It will definitely save you hours of interruption for you.

Use noise-canceling headphones and mute your phone.
Focus on one task at a time. Multitasking is not what developers should practice much, but sometimes it is an essential skill they need. But to switch effectively between tasks, you can plan ahead and split your work day into some sessions.
If your company uses apps like Slack, turn on the “Do not disturb” feature before starting your work session.

4. Communicate!

Regular communication among the team helps to share important information that’ll impact how effectively you get your work done. Some ways to provide more frequent communication include:

Slack channels
Daily standups
Team lunches
Project boards

It’s important to keep meetings and calls short and only include the people who need to be there. Speaking of Slack, it’s best practice to save group chat for communication that applies to all members, and use DMs for personal one-to-one discussions.

Regular communication and feedback lead to more engaged customers and stronger customer relationships, but it can also help to improve developer productivity. Feedback gives a team proper information to help them decide what features and requests to work on and when.

But don’t overdo it! ?

Communication is useful, but like many other good things, you can overdo it. Too much communication can negatively impact productivity and reduce working time and energy available to get the main tasks done.

5. Set reasonable deadlines

To set deadlines that are reasonable for you, you first need to determine the scope of the project. Deadlines are great if they motivate a team and help them plan and prioritize tasks and plan for dependencies. But too much or too early, and they can become overwhelming, negatively impact concentration, and cause stress. When setting deadlines, you should provide a reasonable estimate of how long the task will take, and take into account unforeseen bugs and roadblocks, as well as other priorities that may arise.

If you are using project management software, be sure to monitor it regularly when you work on your tasks.

6. Implement healthy habits

This tip is 100% suitable for all, not just developers.

Drink more water, pay attention to mental health, get enough sleep, eat healthy food, and ventilate the room to breathe more fresh air. Make sure your other muscles get some work to do and not only your brain!

Healthy habits lead to a better level of energy and as a result they will help to improve developer productivity. Take care of yourself first!

7. Design before you implement

You should understand the task clearly because uncertainty will lead to procrastination and wasting of time. Your first goal should be to understand a task clearly and define the tools and strategy you will use.

It is a common beginners’ mistake to jump right into writing the code, without first mapping the nature of the problem and the logical paths for creating the solution.

The best way to follow this tip is to keep a notebook and a pen nearby. Draw maps, outlines, flows and schemes. Write down all the comments and ideas that come to your mind during the process. It will definitely help you not to lose the thread of your logic when you get distracted by something, for example.

8. Find your flow state

Just as a muse comes to writers or artists, so do developers who can catch the “wave” and be fully involved in the process and even do not notice how the time goes. It’s a magical feeling when your knowledge, motivation and concentration align to produce maximum performance. Try to feel this condition and use it to be productive to the maximum.

It is necessary to learn more about yourself and analyze when you are the most productive and what you need to create this “magical flow”.

Due to this reason, remote work and flexible working hours are so important for most developers as you are more flexible and have the opportunity to work when you feel most productive.

Being productive doesn’t mean sitting at your desk from 9am till 5pm. These days many developers think about their work issues and work even when they commute, do sports, relax at home, or have important conversations with peers at a local cafe or a bar. Flexibility is one of the main advantages of remote work. Being flexible with when and where developers work allows them to work smarter, innovate and be more productive. But there are some threats to working remotely, and to prevent them you can follow the tips in our previous article in the blog about remote work.

9. Keep your code blocks clean and short

Nothing is worse than trying to figure out what you did some months ago and how it needs to be changed. When you have massive methods and classes, it can be very difficult to figure out what the original logic was. To implement this rule you can follow some effective principles.

The first principle is DRY. It means “Don’t Repeat Yourself” and was first mentioned in the book The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas. The second principle that we recommend to improve developer productivity is the attractive KISS principle. This abbreviation means “Keep it simple, stupid!

It’s important that your code can be understood by you and other developers, even when it has been written a long time ago. Optimize your code for readability and understandability.

There is a popular and demonstrative quote by Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it well enough yourself.” Don’t forget it while doing your work as a developer, please!

The KISS principle is also offered in two other forms (for those who don’t feel good about the inclusion of the word “stupid”):

Keep it short and simple
Keep it simple and straightforward

As you can see some words may be changed, but the sense of the principle stays the same.

10. Don’t ignore the code reviews

You might be the smartest guy in the room, with the best time-management and knowledge of all the key bindings in the world, and, still, there will always be room for involving others. Everybody makes mistakes and we want to have at least a second pair of eyes to look over a solution before it goes into production. Invest in yourself and introduce pairing programming, code reviews, or some other collective practice to your development process.

‍One of the best types of code reviews is when you have a good programmer who is only a little familiar with the project looking at the code. If you need to explain all the details, you’ll learn your code better, and sometimes an outsider will see problems that you, as the insider, missed. Code reviews cost you nothing but time, but often save you much more than it takes to do it.

Code review is an essential part of workflow, also for sharing best practices with your team. This is connected with our first tip about improving professional knowledge to improve developer productivity.

Bonus Tip

Outsource some of your projects or use Flatlogic Products to save time and improve developer productivity!

We offer a platform with starters/templates, CRUD app generator and hosting, all combined to make a perfect solution for web development. To learn more about it, you can follow Flatlogic.com website.

Productivity is about doing more. But it’s important to make sure you are working on products and features you or your customer need, because this won’t add any value to the business. That’s why productivity is always best combined with efficiency. It’s not just about getting the job done more quickly, but focusing on the right things and producing quality work.

It can take years of discipline and practice to be productive. So, don’t push yourself too hard and expect perfection in the beginning. But we hope that following the tips from this article will help you to improve your productivity.

If you work remotely and feel like your motivation and productivity decrease, you can read our previous article Why Does Remote Work Make Us Paranoid? And What To Do About It?

The post How to Improve Developer Productivity? [Guide] appeared first on Flatlogic Blog.

Decoding binary #WebSockets data using C#

Posted on February 21, 2022May 21, 2023 by Mark Feehily0

On some websites, you may notice data being exchanged between server and client, with no evident Ajax calls being made, in which case there may be activity on the WebSockets (WS) channel, and in this channel, if you are greeted by a jumble of binary data, then you may feel like giving up, but you may find it is easier to decode than you think.

The first clue I noticed was that there was a request header called

Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate; client_max_window_bits

Where deflate is a compression mechanism, which is similar to GZip, and can be decoded easily in C#, First step, though is to view the binary data as base64, so you can copy & paste it, then using this function;

public static byte[] Decompress(byte[] data)
{
MemoryStream input = new MemoryStream(data);
MemoryStream output = new MemoryStream();
using (DeflateStream dstream = new DeflateStream(input, CompressionMode.Decompress))
{
dstream.CopyTo(output);
}
return output.ToArray();
}

Which is called as follows;

var binInput = Convert.FromBase64String(b64Input);
var bDeflate = Decompress(binInput);
var output = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bDeflate);

And from there, you see much more familiar JSON text.