Looking forward to 2014

I’m just looking at my post from last year “looking forward to 2013”! I’m still in a hands-on development role, but now in a different company. Many of my goals for last year are still relevant for this year. Time management has to be right at the top of them; getting the right work/life balance whilst doing a job you love is always difficult; even more so when there is just so much new cool stuff you want to learn!

The delivery process is another key item for this year. Being in a pure software house, delivering working software promptly to clients is not just something to aim for but the key to the success of the business. Whilst the 2-week sprints of scrum might not work, the short delivery cycles and early visibility have to be a good thing. Reducing the time and effort required to develop a working prototype of the screens/system is also something else to look to improve on.

On the technology front, I hope we are quickly proficient in developing and publishing iOS and Android applications; not just on phones but tablets as well. The cloud is also going to be quite important in 2014! So 2014 is shaping up to be a great year for learning new skills and languages. Personally I’d like to look at learning F# and at least one new database language (either a graph database or noSQL).