Ask HN: How do you handle being blocked on others?

[throwawayqs]

Throwaway account so as to not offend anyone I've worked with in the past.

I'm an iOS developer at a small-medium sized company. I often find myself blocked on our product or visual design teams to work out the exact UI/UX of our product. If I attempt to get a head start on my work, I will often end up scrapping my work down the road, because the design team will come up with a new approach to implement. Recently, I've had a hard time motivating myself to build out features that will eventually need to be re-written after design input. I instead want to wait for our product designs to be more fleshed out before spending the engineering effort. This leaves me with free time where I'm essentially blocked on others. I can do code maintenance work and small bug fixes, but building out larger features has these dependencies on others.

How does HN deal with these scenarios?

[anigbrowl]

It sounds as if they're always in love with their latest idea. Try asking for contingency plans, so that the designers begin to think more than just one step ahead. For example, 'if this doesn't test well with users, what else might I need to have lined up?' Also, carve out some time and spend a day in their shoes. Tell them you want to understand their process better and shadow the design team for a day, plus you can offer to do the same for them.

Of course if the tech stack kept changing it would be frustrating for the designers to have to junk their designs on a regular basis. But if you have spent a day with them, then you'll be able to make that argument in their language. This will allow you to empathize with their problems, but will also allow you to get inside their OODA loop [1] and identify things that they may be taking for granted or gaps in their comprehension that are biasing their decisions.

You don't need to be in an adversarial relationship with them, but the weakness in their design process is coming at a cost in engineering resources which they clearly aren't including in their calculations. You can point this out in a non-confrontational way by explaining the time cost of your lost work, and reminding them that 'a stitch in time saves nine.' It's not like you can pass the buck onto Apple or your framework supplier every time the spec changes, any more than the designers have the option of pretending the screen has a different aspect ratio or whatever.

1. OODA is short for Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action, and the 'loop' is the dynamic application of this process in a fluid situation - originally, in military combat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

[moocow01]

Id honestly say just go home early or try to get additional projects. Its sounds like you are under allocated.

Id definitely agree with not jumping ahead of the product team - its just a recipe for frustration and burnout. You could also try being more integrated with the product team if thats of interest.

[rizumu]

We use kanban which helps keep blocked stories in check because they can easily be flagged 'red' or 'blocked'. Then the rest of the team sees this and can pitch in to help out because the idea is that a blocked story has highest priority.