Project Target Date Extended Two Weeks

[Gregory Brown]

Hi folks,

I've been trying to avoid having to send this message, but now seems
to be the right time to do so.

I'm going to need to extend the target completion date for the
mendicant project from 2008.09.16 to 2008.09.30

I had pledged to complete 441 hours on the project, and so far have
completed just under 300.

With about 3 weeks left, it seems a bit daunting to do 150 hours of
work, especially since I will be on a 9 day vacation starting August
28th (about half of that will be at Lone Star RubyConf, for those who
want to meet up and say hello)

So rather than pull my hair out trying to meet a self imposed
deadline, I think moving the date a couple weeks would be best. I
will try earnestly to meet this date and not continuously drag the
project on, though I will still be cycling back into contracting work
over the coming weeks, which may upset things a tiny bit.

I hope people understand, and I hope you've been enjoying Prawn so
far. It should be pretty nice by the end of September. Below is a
bit of background about the reasons behind this decision for those
interested.

-greg

== Re-thinking Ruby Mendicant

In retrospect, I realized a few problems with the way I scheduled and
planned Ruby Mendicant. First of all, I did not plan for any time
off. I tried to keep the scheduled work load per week light (around
20 hours a week) so that I could take time off by working a little
extra any given week. However, I did not account for travel expenses
at all in my budget!

This meant I had to take some contracting work at times over the
summer, which explains for dips in hours from time to time. That
combined with the time off itself, managed to make it difficult to
keep up 20 hours a week.

Also... I recorded the hours in the most conservative way possible. I
treated them nearly exactly like my contracting work, and that may
have been a mistake in retrospect. All of the recorded hours reflect
time actively working on Prawn related activities, because I stopped
my clock any time I went off task.

Finally, I didn't record any of my time working on other open source
stuff. Any work I did on Ruport, any writing I did, participation on
mailing lists that weren't Prawn related, etc, were not considered.
As I wasn't able to get away from these habits entirely, they still
took up some of my time.

I feel as if I've put in an earnest effort on Ruby Mendicant, but
still managed to come up short, hours-wise. Based on the excellent
progress on Prawn that has happened over the last few months (not just
through my work, but through the collaborative effort this project
helped fuel), I can't help but feel as if the program has been a wild
success, and that the problems lie mainly in the administrative
details, not the execution.

What do folks think?

-greg