Tim Roberts was crowned the 2008 Software Design champion at the TopCoder Open at the Mirage Resort in Las Vegas on May 8th. You didn’t see him on the nightly news. He isn’t dating a supermodel. He’s just an unassuming guy who knows how to design and code software.
Tim is the guy you want on your team because he knows how to take calculated shortcuts to meet the goals of the project.
The Challenge
Design a computer program that can calculate the relationships between TopCoder programmers in six hours. That’s a six hour sprint in the Agile lingo with a working program at the end of the period. That’s impossible, right?
Tim’s secret
Tim spent one hour studying the requirements and asking clarifying questions to make sure that he fully understood them. That’s right, Tim didn’t sit down and start hammering away at the keyboard until the second hour. Can you image the pressure building in that room as Tim heard the clickety clack of keys humming away on the task while he sat quietly “studying the requirements?”
TopCoder awards points for bells & whistles, however, Tim focused on creating a basic working program that addressed the core requirements. We all know that bells and whistles push most projects beyond their schedule and cost baseline yet we chronically fall into that trap. Tim was a one man show so he could exercise his will power and resist the temptation to gold plate his own program. In short, his strategy to Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) won the day.
Photo finish
Tim submitted working code before the deadline while other programmers never finished their over engineered creations. We’ve seen that movie before haven’t we?
Score one for Agile development practices. Score $25,000 for Tim who said that he planned to celebrate by doing “about four hours of work.” Smart guy.
