Walking in the noisy streets, the New Year atmosphere permeates everywhere, and the footsteps of 2018 come to us inadvertently. It is the stage of annual year-end summary again. Looking back on 2017, I feel that we have been running all the time and never stopped to look back at the journey we have come. Project summary, learning summary and experience summary are always encouraged by the company. Often in the busy rhythm, many people will ignore these important but not urgent summaries, and others may continue to step on the hole they have stepped on without knowing it, leading to the reduction of team efficiency. In the process of practice, it is found that many skilled personnel are often tired of writing a summary or document. In their words, "You would rather let me write a 100 line code than a 100 word document". Those powerful technical giants can write articles, which are read by countless technical personnel. The knowledge and experience they convey are very powerful. Only by recognizing the importance of summary can we go further and steadily in the future. In combination with some practices in our work, I share them from two aspects: summary and learning:
1. Summary
Review the needs and problems of key projects in 2017 from the perspective of R&D, and reflect on what we did not do well in the R&D link, and what is worth learning. The complexity of the Datong project and data migration in 2017 rose to a new level compared with previous years. For example, a customer has a variety of billing unit price types, the associated households of underground garage and residence, the beginning of the year, changes, statistics of result data, and other business needs put forward higher requirements for the product. Perfect and high-quality products need to be able to support various situations and give appropriate prompt and warning in a timely manner. We spent nearly half of the time in the early stage of the project, including demand research, demand analysis, demand confirmation, functional design and development design. As the source of the project, the preliminary work can neither deviate from the direction nor cause any problems. Once problems occur, the project will be disastrous.
Collaboration within R&D
The early demand summary documents and demand reports of the R&D Department made our work in the demand stage more orderly and effective. In fact, we also experienced the stage without documents. At that time, the demand research work was somewhat chaotic. After the research, the researchers found a place to record at random. The problems that customers feedback at any time were also recorded sporadically in the process, lacking systematization Structured process. Every researcher will rely on his own experience to do it, and the experience has not been precipitated and shared. Now with them, whether experienced researchers or not, they can communicate with customers in a more unified and professional manner. It reduces repeated omissions, and focuses the situation of each project to lay a good foundation for future analysis and demonstration.
Functional design and development design documents also point out the direction for our work in the design phase. For large functions, there are supporting functional design documents. They can not only help designers to clarify their ideas and find design loopholes in the process. At the same time, it can also help R&D personnel to understand more comprehensively the demand background and other comprehensive information of the realized function, why this function is generated, help R&D personnel to understand the business, and promote R&D personnel to actively think in the R&D process.
The production accident report document gives us an alarm, and the annual production accident review also allows us to reflect on what is not enough and needs to be strengthened. Even a small mistake will have a great impact on customers. What impressed me was that in a project, a query condition was added to a report. Due to the low query efficiency of the report, the system was stuck and could not be used after multiple clicks, and the charging work was affected. Fortunately, there are monitoring logs in the background to help us find the corresponding problems in time. This experience really made me sweat in retrospect. If it had a serious impact on customers, how should we make up for the mistakes. Any small details should be paid attention to at every stage, and never ignore the impact of small details on the whole.
In addition to the early preparation, later development and testing of its own research and development, close cooperation and communication with personnel from other departments is a necessary condition for the whole project to be carried out in an orderly pace. No matter which department staff, we are all as a whole to provide services to customers. All personnel involved in the project need to have a very in-depth understanding of the overall situation of the project, and the personnel from all subsequent departments should cooperate well to deepen trust and understanding.
Cooperation with marketing partners
The travel log, demand research documents and project kick-off meeting of the Datong project in the early stage of the Marketing Department make the demand personnel clearly understand the project situation, project progress stage and project complexity. With these understandings, the demander can know well. When the demanders communicate with customers again, they can discuss problems with customers more deeply and improve the efficiency of the demand survey stage. It is not necessary for personnel from different departments to repeatedly ask customers about their business. I believe that no one wants the same thing repeated several times. For the project implementation personnel, they will be more active and efficient in promoting the specific work of the project after understanding the situation, communicate with relevant personnel, and complete the systematic implementation and online work with high quality and efficiency.
Cooperation with partners of the Project Department
The project travel logs and demand summary documents in the middle and later stages of the implementation of the project department enable the demand personnel and R&D personnel to have a more personal understanding of the problems and needs in the project implementation stage. Since the R&D personnel seldom go to the site at ordinary times, it is not easy to feel the seriousness and urgency of the problems on the site. Through the travel log, the R&D personnel can understand the operation of the system in the actual scenario, and the customer's feedback on the product will enable the R&D to meet the needs of the actual situation. The situation of making cars behind closed doors was avoided. Any product is customer-centric. If a product cannot solve customer problems well, it is not a good product. In the software industry, it seems that project implementation, testing and R&D are always incompatible, complaining and blaming each other. Through daily communication and reading of business trip logs, we found that R&D partners would think about and understand the differences in the nature of their work from the perspective of project implementation partners, and seek mutual understanding and tolerance. I remember a young partner in our group said, "We need to meet the needs of customers in order to better serve customers. We can't always let the small partners of the project department coordinate to bear the huge pressure from product problems. We have made great efforts in research and development.". It was really touching to hear that. What efforts have been made to enable everyone to have such mutual support and understanding. All this often comes from seemingly ordinary and ordinary little things. Sometimes seeing customers' satisfaction with product functions in other people's logs will bring us great strength. These are the driving forces for our continuous progress.
2. Learning and sharing
When there is not much project work at the end of each year, the work led by product version iteration will gradually increase. For each step of product iterative transformation, the final product will be produced after repeated demonstration and conclusion. There are many factors that affect the effect of the end product. A good product can only be created by accurately grasping the business scenario of project requirements, reasonable and easy to use design, rapid response to demand in research and development, stability and safety of research and development products, and many other factors. And think about whether we have done well in these aspects? The answer is no. I read a passage on an actor's microblog earlier: "Most people believe that actors are an industry with a low threshold. I don't think it's right. It's not just the performance itself that really wants to learn to perform well, which is probably the reason why I have always asked myself to keep improving in my studies." This sentence completely subverted my understanding of the actor industry, Looking back on my work, I think it's the same. I just need to keep improving my work. Especially for R&D personnel, today's rapid technology update and iteration requires us to never relax in learning and work hard to do a good job. When we do a good job now, we must go to seek further goals and ask ourselves to do better, and the products we create in the future can also be better.
In combination with my daily needs research and other work experience:
I remember a few years ago when I first took over the demand, there was no way to do research. I tried to do it with my own experience, and I didn't feel uncomfortable at that time. As the complexity of the project increases and the number of projects increases, the demand is like a wave coming in the face, and you will find that many things have been unable to deal with. Scattered and unrestrained communication results in low efficiency and missing requirements. The subsequent common demand survey template and project demand survey report have brought great help to the demand survey. Every time the demander arrives at the customer's site, we will sort out the content to be investigated according to the report. Report and sort out after returning from the site to form a detailed project requirements file. In this way, the personnel of each department can understand the situation in detail, and the handover at different stages of the project work is also very helpful. At present, we have made progress in demand management, and our goal this year is to gradually form process specifications in demand management, form supporting research, confirmation and change templates, and make demand more professional and standardized.
