Sean
A few days ago I went for a quick walk down to the end of my road and back. I wanted to get a good chunk of steps in to improve my Fitbit stats. On my way back, I noticed my neighbors across the street had hired a couple guys to work on their porch. When I looked at the handymen, they were tooling away on their makeshift tables. I couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, but I saw that they had propped up the roof of the gazebo with wood planks. And they kept walking back and forth around the corner of the house measuring and sizing up the porch.
As a non-handy man, but still a wanna-be intellectual, I thought to myself, how can I make sense of the work that they are doing? How could I talk to someone else about what they were doing? What would I say to them if for some reason I had to talk to them?
I was trying to figure out an intelligent way to frame what they were doing in my mind so I could feel comfortable if I had to enter their workspace as an educated person.
At first I tried thinking how construction and home improvement fits into the broader taxonomy of knowledge. It is a science, not a social science. It is engineering, not a natural science. I positioned the idea of “construction” in my mind as a sub-domain of engineering. Hah! Needless to say, that didn’t improve my comfort level at all.
Then I took note of the tools they were using. One guy was using a circular saw, the other was manning a hammer. There were two of them. So I thought to myself, hmm.. they’re using hand tools to build out the deck. Soooo… what? Then something clicked. Maybe I could frame their construction work like any other development project.
From my experience with computers and engineering, I knew how development projects went. Here’s a rundown of how I thought through the process:
- All development projects start with an objective, goal, or finished product in mind. There is a reason for doing the development work. In this case, maybe the goal was to expand the size of the porch.
- Once it is decided to develop, someone has to determine the requirements, or specifications for the work.
- Then a design is created. Maybe some design patterns or design tools are used. For example, they could have said for this type of porch, the wooden planks that make up the floor should go in this direction. And this is how the planks should meet in the corner, etc. That would be the pattern.
- Then they would have to plan the development, or in this case, construction. Someone would have to break down the project into smaller and smaller tasks. Then the task areas would have to be assigned to people. Looking at the big picture timeline, they would have to create a Gantt chart out of all the tasks, and sequence all the things they had to do. What can they do in parallel? What do they have to do sequentially?
- Then they can start with development, construction, or execution. For development, there are tools they need to know how to use. There is know-how they need to know how to do. And even with know how, they need prior knowledge to help them make judgements. This could be acquired through education and experience.
- There is also a team, or workers to consider. There are costs.
- Also, they need to know who they can go to for help. Like tech support. That could be Lowe’s or Home Depot.
- Then when they are done, they have to do some quality testing. They need to stand on the porch to make sure it is sturdy. Jump on it even. Stress test it a little.
- Then, and finally, they will be done
Hehe. I felt very proud of myself when I put these thoughts down on paper. While I had almost no knowledge of the technical details on construction, I was able to confidently say that I had a grasp on what they were doing, and how they must be going about working. It was the highlight of my day 🙂
My final thought on the matter was that this development process framework could be applied to almost any development project. Whether it be construction, civil engineering, software development, electronics, or any other professional development project.
