Managing a Growing Project
Fri 01 May 2020
I am no Project Manager in even the loosest sense of the word. Despite that I find myself learning more and more of the processes of PM. This is especially true when projects start to expand and grow. Specifically I am speaking about the NHL API project I started almost two years ago. This lead me to the rabbit hole that is permissions and how to manage the project overall going forward. The projects roots are very rough, even today I still generally commit directly to master. Now the repository has grown to over 70 commits, two distinct files and 17 contributors.
Balance
I am constantly trying to be cognizant of is becoming overly possessive of the project. While it may have started as a one-man show I want and enjoy contributions from others. The converse of worrying about becoming possessive is that there are times when steering is necessary. One of the instances that comes to mind is the suggestion of including example code. The goal of the project is documentation, so I declined such suggestions. Unmaintained code becomes a hindrance over time and I don’t want to add that complexity to the project.
Growth
There is often a pressure to grow projects, to make them expand over time and change. Its a common thing for businesses to always want growth and it seems that mentality has spread to software. Something like the NHL API is a very slow changing thing, just looking at the commit history shows this. Weeks and months will go by without new contributions or even me looking at the API itself. I dabbled with ideas such as using Swagger to generate more appealing documentation. Every time I tried to add something new and unique I realized it felt forced. This ultimately forced me to accept that growth will not be happening, the project has likely reached its zenith.
Looking Forward
The next steps are likely small quality-of-life things such as the recent Gitter.im badge. Things that make it easier for people to interact but don’t change the project overall. My knowledge of the API makes for fast answers so I try to help out when I am able.
Category: programming Tagged: code hockey NHL NHL-api programming project-management