The Flyer

My wife asked me recently to help her make a flyer.You're wondering what this has to do with software, but by the time it was done, I felt like I'd delivered a major project, so I had to write this up as the retrospective.

She started by saying something like "I've already downloaded a program that's supposed to be good for making flyers." It wasn't. It was free. It came bundled with stuff that was useless & nigh-on counter-productive. Within the first few moments of using it, I realised that it didn't have the features I needed for the flyer, & it also didn't work well - it was poor quality. This was my first hint that this was a software project - management had decided on, & pressed, a technology that wasn't applicable for the problem at hand.

I then started a business analysis session - "What is the purpose of the product?". Her response was along the lines of "You know, it has to say ..." & she reamed off a few paragraphs of "essential features". Definitely a software project. "That's not all going to fit within the resource budget" I responded, referring to an A4 sheet.

This was going to take some true BA work.

• Who's your target user base?
• What's the product differentiater - the message?
• What's your distribution platform?
• How are you going to support the roll-out?

As usual, you have to ask the questions several times until you get a consistent answer.

Now came the first attempt to use the "proposed technology". Abject failure of the prototype. Definitely one to throw out, having learnt an important lesson.

Time to fall back on older, proven technology ... Powerpoint (or OpenOffice) may not be meant for flyers, but it works with the simplest of tweaks. No gimmicks, but solid, reliable functionality. Not only that, but I know I can turn it into PDF for distribution via email, or just print out myself.

About now, I was telling my wife to go away & leave me to it. This was a job for a professional developer, & QA wouldn't be necessary until the first release. I didn't expect this would be a multi-sprint feature epic, so I didn't feel that I had to rely on an iterative process. The product owner could easily decide that the task was done with the first release candidate. I was, however, prepared for continuous delivery - emailing her a PDF while she was wandering the house remotely with her tablet.

Tacit approval was assumed when no further issues were raised.

There was no release party, although I definitely deserved a cup of tea thereafter. I am yet to see if marketing (whose input could not be acquired in time for the initial design) can work with the deliverable as released.