Have you ever done something quick and dirty even though doing things "the right way" would only take a little more time? Maybe you didn't have a little more time? Of course. Haven't we all?

Here's an example. Recently, I was creating a conference registration form for a client on her Plone-based site. Ideally, the client would have created and maintained the registration form herself, since the tool we were using has a graphical form creation interface. However, the documentation for the tool we were using was out of date. I thought about updating the documentation at that time and then helping the client through it, but that would have required a lot more time than just setting up the form myself. Also, I was going to be out of town shortly (for the NTEN conference) and the client wanted to start accepting conference registrations as soon as possible. In the circumstances, it seemed a reasonable solution for me to create the form, so I did. Many form tweaks later, I think I have spent more time on updating the form than it would have taken to update the documentation, which could have helped others besides just this client.

Comment from Jessica McCoy on April 25, 2007 - 1:45pm

Yeah, we have that same issue. We're so busy just keeping up with our everyday tasks that we don't take time to create patterns that would improve our workflow. It's a tough problem. I keep thinking that things will slow down a little bit, enough that I can take time to work on long-term stuff, but then things always pop up last minute.

Sorry, I don't have any ideas either about how to solve it...I've been trying to get more volunteers and interns to help with some of the more mundane tasks here to free up time for other things, but that just means I have to spend time supervising them. So it's not perfect.

 Good Luck!

Comment from cheryl jerozal on April 26, 2007 - 3:34pm

It's good to know I am not the only one who struggles with this. Maybe working with volunteers and interns will get less time-consuming as you go along? Good luck to you too!