Our project at work has received a major set of new requirements to implement for next year. First the team worked together on migrating the project to use a new set of development tools. We are winding down that effort, researching and resolving the problems found by internal test. The lead of our team decided it would be best for the team to get together to collectively design the solution for the new requirements. The software development manager had put together a schedule for the new requirements. Design was supposed to start Monday. But the application development team lead had requested we delay a day until the whole team could get together to work on the design.Tuesday morning I got a call from the software development manager. I told him that we were delaying work on the design until the team could get together. He said that was definitely not the plan. He wanted me alone to work on the design while the rest of the team continued to fix migration bugs. I recommended he get in touch with our team lead and get on the same page. Since I sit near our team lead, I told him what the software development manager said. I also reminded him that the manager trumped the team lead. So I told him I was going to get busy on design unless he could make the manager think otherwise. We got a group email stating that I would be the only dude who would be assigned to the design.
I think I am a rarity among developers in that I actually like investigating and resolving bugs. This is one of the reasons I have been on this current project for so long. It is a big software maintenance project. There are many opportunities to work on bugs reported by developers, internal test, customer test, and production users. It also seems like there is always some weird and interesting problem to investigate. Most developers do not like the maintenance side of the work. I think some of these guys are getting jealous that I get to work almost exclusively on design for quite a while.
Now I am not sure why I got the bonus of being assigned exclusively to design. I know the manager is aware of my abilities and has no doubt I can get the job done to meet the schedule. I also think he has set me aside to work on “special projects”. Mostly these tasks are not glamorous. They involve review of new requests, along with analyzing and costing impact to the system. I also get pulled in to participate in customer conference calls. That is just not any fun for developers. Perhaps this design task is my reward for doing well in these special projects. I guess I should not question it. The manager is the boss after all right?
