I’ve been thinking about what makes it so hard to organize and hold a sprint. TurboGears’ sprints were successful in 2008, but I think they could have been more so. We have recently had a wildly successful sprint, but most of the burden for that sprint lay on one person, the sprint organizer. Michael did an awesome job, but the sprint would have been more successful had we been able to entice more sprinters, we were [unbelievably] organized to scale to about 30 sprinters, but only about 6 of us really showed up. Getting people excited enough about what you are doing is the hardest part of sprinting, and also the least interesting thing to do from a developers perspective. We just don’t like marketing all that much.
Last Saturday was a beautiful day. I sat inside a local coffee shop within eyeshot of the Flat Irons, and I did not wonder why no one had shown up to accompany me. Why would anyone want to give up a saturday to sit behind a monitor, when they could be out climbing, sailing, picnicking, hiking, etc. etc. etc. Boulder, CO is an unbelievably beautiful place, and in the fall when the days are warm and the nights are cool, it is so easy to take advantage of our surplus of good weather. And yet, I sit there in the coffee shop, writing documentation, of all things. This is certainly the drudgery of software development, and at the same time a necessary evil.
When no one showed up for an hour, and it was clear that I was destined to spend the day working alone I started to think about why, in fact, I myself was sitting in the coffee shop, working away. And I thought for a bit; it’s easy to generalize when you’ve had a few chai’s and you want to be distracted for a minute from some mundane technical writing. It occurred to me that I could simply stop work altogether, here at the sprint, and in life, and then my savings would run out, and I’d be poor again. Having to spend a summer eating potatoes for lunch, saving the tuna for dinner is not something I want to experience a second time. Compounding this desire to survive is the fact that I have three other people who require my drive to obtain subsistence. So, is sprinting about survival?
Well, here in lies the dichotomy. For the project, sprinting is required for survival. Most OSS projects I have been involved in need a shot in the arm once in a while to keep all of the “elders” motivated to work when the sprint is over. Meanwhile, the individual sprinters in no way need the sprint to survive. There’s always another project, another way to solve your technical problems so you can move on. Sprinting, for the individual is about thriving.
With the millions of OSS projects out there, there is an unbelievable number of people who find another way of solving their particular problems that they want to share with everyone. These people who share are putting their ideas, and hard work out there so that one day, they will thrive. Thriving might mean other people accepting your ideas, and utilizing your work, but it might also boil down to the fact that we need sustenance to survive, and we want to provide a better life for ourselves and our loved ones. This is an incredibly motivating factor. I have found often times in life I must suffer a bit in order to thrive. Yes, I ate potatoes and tuna for a summer. But I didn’t settle for a fast-food job to make ends meet. I continued to work to find a technical job where I could use the skills I learned my first two years of school, and pay for the last two years. And you know what? My loans stopped accruing that very summer.
This is part of a four-part series on sprinting. The next part is entitled: Sprinting: Is our current model broken?
You just described the decision faced with many college students. Get the fast food job, or stick it out on mac and cheese. Like you, I chose the mac and cheese. With tuna for a break.