Progress Report - Late April 2009

[Daryl Kulak]

Here is where we are today:

1. I've been able to really pound out the chapters being off work this month, even better than I'd hoped. I'm now probably 1-2 weeks away from jumping into editing.
2. The editing process will be quite interesting. I'm not sure exactly how it will work. Have you seen what our house looked like as I was brainstorming each individual chapter? Post-it notes everywhere. Well, now we need to do this, but on the scale of the entire book. I'm not sure our brainstorming process will scale!!! My wife is suggesting we could use parts of the ceiling, plus bring in a big cardboard box for post-it note space. Who knows? Anyway, we need to take the raw ideas that I've put into the chapters and rearrange them so they make some sense, then rewrite the entire thing so it flows. Still a lot of work, but we are really closing in on the goal of a finished manuscript, I think (I hope). Any ideas on how to rearrange the ideas using some physical metaphors would be appreciated. I'm even thinking maybe we print the entire manuscript and then cut out each idea and tape them to the walls, to avoid looking at an abbreviated post-it note and saying "What was this idea again?" For this brainstorming, Hong will be joining me for almost all of it, so Hong won't necessarily be able to make the jump between my post-it note and the idea inside the manuscript. Anyway, here we go!!
3. Once brainstorming, editing, rearranging and rewriting is complete (I'm thinking 1-2 months, truly!) then we submit our prospectus to Addison-Wesley. I've already contact my editor for the Use Cases book and he's very interested to take a look. I guess we will be using a different editor at Addison-Wesley this time, because our previous editor doesn't work with the Agile stuff as much. He is pretty high up the chain now so it will be nice to have another close connection at a publishing company.

Well, I'd better get back to work. I wish I wouldn't have also agreed to build a Website for our local Agile Alliance. Doesn't leave ENOUGH time for writing!