One of the nicer things that happened this year was that things have started getting better at work. A lot better.
2012 marks the year in which we stopped paying lip-service to making things better and we started doing it. I cannot go into the details of everything that was done for obvious reasons but we made some big strides in the quality of our product and how we target what is to be built and we made some real in-roads to tearing down long-standing impediments. Those are both exciting developments.
As far as how we build things, we've made some major changes there. Unit-test-driven development has all but completely infiltrated one office and is starting to take hold in others. Resistance to acceptance-test-driven development is starting to falter; I imagine it will crumble in the next one to two years.
We've also become less resistant to rolling out process improvements in general as I imposed an "auto-rollback" system on the team and it did not rise up in revolt against it... or maybe they did but I and some other supporters were able to quell the rebellion. Either way, things are getting better. Most importantly: other members of the team are starting to impose their own process improvements.
Are things where they ought to be? No. They never are.
We're getting there but it's an act of supreme patience to allow things to unfold on their own schedule.
