There is some buzz on Twitter about One-game-a-month challenge(#OneGameAMonth). Point is to make a game each month, 12 games in a year. It’s gamificated and social.  There were similar events before, like game-in-a-week or game-in-a-day competitions. Those are for game developers, but I like the idea and I would want to try it for software projects in general.

It could be interesting to try a project-in-a-month challenge. Every month you devise an idea, implement it and publish it.

What’s great about it:

• You wont be stuck with the same project for a long time, designing or polishing it indefinitely
• You’ll do what’s really important for the project
• Once a month you’ll cover the complete software lifecycle
• What you learn in one month, you can immediately apply the next month

Quick rules:

• Rules are actually guidelines – it’s not a competition
• One idea at a time – do not prepare ideas for the next month
• You can imitate an existing idea, but add some twist or change a point of view

 

My projects generally tend to fail. I condemn them to fail as soon I start working, and for various reasons:

• I want too much. I create ideas for software, service and business model. I could spend years to actually implement them.
• I over-architect. I’m so afraid of spaghetti code and dependencies that I spend too much time thinking how to write instead of writing.
• I’m rarely satisfied with my work. Which is good because I always strive to be better. Which is bad because I get lost in details.

Project in a month positively influences this problems:

• Project must be small-scoped – can’t do much
• Minimal architecting – only when needed
• No worries if it’s not perfect – it can’t be perfect in a month

(Why did I write half of a post in bulleted lists? Maybe are efficiency and minimalism already creeping in.)

(And I published it without a title. Corrected in third iteration)