Samstag April 02, 2005

New blogger and a bit about climbing Fuji-san Hello
I am another blogger here in this space. I do not know yet, what I am going to blog about. I will most likely be about our product, the N1 Grid Engine 6 and some other stuff, most likely some nonsense. To my person, I am part of the N1 Grid Engine engineering team in Regensburg, Germany. Daniel Templeton wrote already a lot about his experiences as an American in a German Engineering team far, far away from the Sun core development centres. Every once in a while, one gets the impression, that we are a little town in the enemy’s domain, similar to Asterix and Obelix…. ;-). I am a north German working and living in south Germany. It might be unbelievable, but I still do not understand the German spoken in Baveria and it is not making it simpler, that every town speaks its own dialect…
Okay, why do not start with a little nonsense…
I have done Software Development for some time now and a couple years ago happened to work in Japan. Among the travelling to get the country to know, I climbed up mount Fujiyama. On the way back to Tokyo, I came up with the idea, that climbing Fuji-san is the perfect metaphor for software development, at least for most projects.
We started the climb at 11:00 p.m. in the dark. We followed the narrow tracks up the mountain with not more than a tiny flash light. This is the same for software projects. One starts with nearly no knowledge on the project. One is looking around, tries to follow the tiny path and hops not to stumble and fall. The path is a very stony and sandy one. One has to watch out for ones steps.
After being up the mountain a bit, we saw a thunderstorm coming our way. We sow the clouds coming, the lightning, how it jumped between the clouds before the flash went down to earth. That was a very scary moment. We almost had to turn around and abandon the project. The usual worries during the development. Is ones political situation stable and strong enough? Will the company have enough money to continue the founding or will we work on a different project next week? We were lucky, the wind changed, and the thunderstorm did not get close the Fuji-san. We witnessed an unbelievable show.
Continuing from there, it got rougher. The sand was gone, and we had to climb. At some occasions, we had to go done on all four and really climb. The path was about 1 meter wide and we came into a “traffic yam”. To many people claiming up the mountain. This was a very dangerous part. We could hardly see the rocks. The batteries of my flashlight drained and I had no light. Other climbers using sticks to make the climb easier, did not know what to do with their sticks. More than one time, I was almost hit by one, because that person did not care for the other ones. Any difference to software engineering in big companies with little budget? Groups are fighting for funding. They do not always care for the other groups, right? What about groups being a thread, because they want to work in the same space? One of our group-members had bad luck and hurt her knee. She missed on of the rocks, while she blocked a stick. She had to turn around and get down…
Having come that far, the light was not a problem anymore. The trail got easier, but the air got thin (being over 3500 meters above see level). We were very short on air, we were exhausted. We almost turned around, but it was not possible. I think, nobody is surprised when I tell you, that we did not make it all the way to the top in time. We should have been on top during the sunrise. But due to the people and the exhaustion we did not make it. We were about 100 meters below the top, when the sun rose. Again, so much different from Software Development? Most of the projects I know, are never on time. There is always something that no one expected. Something surprising. The good news is, that in most cases, one has the extra time. It makes the product better and it ensures, that the programmers do not exhaust themselves too much. For us it was also better not to be on the top during the sunrise (because of the crowds up there). We paused and found a good place for resting. We were still sitting there, when the sun rose. We had a very, very good view on the sunrise.
A moment later, we reached the top and finished our project. But it was not nice up there. Cold, windy. We did not stay there for long. The way down was also much more painful than we expected. However we did it. Only our team-mate, that got insured, did not make it all the way and it took her very, very long to get back to the base station. Sitting in the bus and reflecting the climb: I can say, we were not proper equipped and not well enough trained. We also had wrong information about the climb. It was much tougher than in the descriptions said which we read before we started. We need 11 hours for the climb.
Well, what a surprise. I usually find this to be very similar to developing projects…
Though, does this work as a metaphor for software development? I consider this a nice and little analogy. My girl friend said, that this text sounds a bit depressing, that should not be the case. I like chalenges. This was not the first mountain I climbed and will certainly not be the last one. The same is true for software development. I enjoy the challenges during the development and the pride of having managed something, that seemed to be impossible at the beginning. It is fun to have the possibility to do something new every day. I like it a lot.
And now a couple pictures from the climb:
The climb in the dark:

The last station before the top:

On the way down:

Beeing back at the base: ( Apr 02 2005, 08:01:10 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [2]