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Operating Cadence

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Polishing

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Feeling stuck in the final details of a project? That is when you need polishing!

What is polishing?
Polishing is the last step of a project, the closing stage
You get to polish when you could already deliver the project “as is”, eg. it is working

Goal of polishing
The goal of polishing is how to define when is the right time to stop the project with what you know now
Polishing allows you to go from average to good, or from good to great
The critical thing of polishing is to identify what are the polishing actions to do that will give you a return on investment of your time, and what are the ones that don’t

Projects where polishing should be used:
Project has a fixed deadline to deliver that cannot be moved
Project is something not very exciting or interesting, and the sooner is get finished the better is for you

Approach
Define the potential outcomes that the project can take, and where do you think you are at the moment
Pick where you would like to get the project to and what is the value of it
Define how many more hours you want to dedicate to “polish” the project
List the tasks missing and estimate time and impact to get to goal
Find the tasks that are more likely to drive the outcome you want and fill your “hours” budget

Example
Project: React coding
Step 1
Outcomes:
Project would not pass Toptal approval and needs a lot of work
Project would not pass Toptal approval but is easily fixed
Project would pass Toptal approval
Project would pass and Richardson is impressed/ learned something new
Step 2
I think I am in level 2 right now and want to get to level 3 because that would make it a real life exercise and also will allow me to get the project done for the real evaluation.
Step 3
I want to budget more 4 hours to this project
1 hour today
3 hours tomorrow

Step 4
low
medium
high

List of steps
Task
Estimated time (min)
Actual time
Impact to goal
Prioritized
Prioritized time
1
get realtor in display view
20
150
high
20
2
handling errors gracefully
60
120
high
60
3
add new user button on add to page
5
3
high
5
4
Rented indicator on list for realtors/admin
5
13
high
5
5
form button to change to edit in the label (both user and apartment)
10
3
high
10
6
review and clean up code (debugging)
30
​
high
30
7
edit user saves password as is
10
16
high
10
8
no results returned apartment
5
3
high
5
9
convert pages to components in typescript
20
​
low
0
10
Add "click here to login" after register
5
3
low
5
11
auto login after register
15
6
low
0
12
mininum password requirements
10
​
low
0
13
failed to fetch api down
20
​
low
0
14
Connect map marker and list together
20
​
medium
20
15
adding apartment with already existent name is still adding to the list even if not adds to db
10
​
medium
10
16
better ui on deleting (double checking)
20
​
medium
0
17
auto refresh after delete user
15
6
medium
15
18
token = undefined causes error
10
​
medium
0
19
e2e tests
180
​
medium
0
20
add clear button for filters
5
​
medium
0
21
max as 0 does not work on filter
10
13
medium
10
22
review add apartment to make sure validations are corret
20
30
medium
20
23
improve ui of aparmtent list (Better visibility)
15
​
medium
0
There are no rows in this table
366
Sum
225
Sum
⁠




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