Quickdraw Hero

Hi,

In the team of one of my clients, I earned the nickname “Quickdraw Hero”

(My surname “Held” translates to hero in english 😉*)*

Because I shoot so fast.

I gained this reputation from the team rather quickly. At that time, it was meant somewhat derogatorily.

The team was not accustomed to my pace.

They had gotten comfortable. The software has been in development for more than 10 years. And over time, substantial technical debt had accumulated. It was a creeping process.

But due to this debt, it became increasingly difficult to release the software and develop new features.

When I was commissioned, the last release was nearly 1.5 years ago. A state I was supposed to change.

To achieve this, I had to make many decisions that the team had previously shied away from.

The scope of the open tasks had to be drastically cut. I had to decide that test environments, which are used among others by stakeholders, go offline temporarily or remain online with errors for a while. It was necessary to move forward with development and finally get a foot in the door.

It required courage. The team had not been able to muster it before.

On the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, we finally made it.

After a previously failed release , the software was finally live. It took us 5 hours. At 10 PM the maintenance page went live. By 3 AM, the software was online. It was a herculean effort.

I am still referred to as “Quickdraw Hero”. But the nickname means something different today. It stands for courage.

The Scrum Master on the team, who also gave me the name, recently gave a talk on the values of Scrum. He talked about courage being one of these values. And he cited me as an example. In that moment, I was truly happy. I was pleased that the challenging times my decisions had brought are appreciated today. The way I approached things is acknowledged.

In software development, you need courage.

If you cover your bases for every system change, you get lost in discussions. You always pass the responsibility on. And then your boss has to decide something he doesn’t have the full context for.

Dare to do it. Be brave. If you believe something is right, then do it. Of course, you will make mistakes. But only because you didn’t know something at the time of your decision. You will learn from this mistake.

The only way forward in development is: forward!

Rule the Backend,

~ Marcus