Devlogs 2

I was stressed on Wednesday this week, overwhelmed with keeping track of regressions caused by a change to a React component. However, I discovered a very useful way of dealing with it -- create a whole Trello board just for the problem. Here is a screenshot of the trello board once I'd fixed all the problems.



There are 11 things that gradually got added to the Problems list and got moved off it once I'd dealt with them.

I could also have written these things down on a notepad or post-its (or in my devlog) as I noticed them. Both those options would have worked pretty well too.

Without Trello

I would start the refactoring, do a manual test, and notice that some things were broken. I tried to remember every problem (there were 11 separate problems in the end) and quickly got overwhelmed. I hate missing things in work so this was quite upsetting, and I found myself looking for distractions instead of focusing on the work.

With Trello

When doing manual testing, whenever I noticed a problem, I just added a card to the new Problems list. And then promptly and happily ignored it and forgot about it. Once I'd finished the thing I was working on, I could come back to the Problems list to see what I needed to fix.

This also allowed me to prioritize work. Instead of having the "native scrollbars option" idea and then immediately rabbit-holing into the problem, I just added it to the list. When I came back to it, I decided that it wasn't worth doing -- although I didn't have to immediately discard the idea, keeping it around to discuss next time someone else on my team had time to talk.