Developing Consistency

I’ve been thinking some about developing consistency the last few days. As I look to provide value to businesses and startups, I want them to know what they are getting when they hire me.

This consistency needs to be in place in a number of areas. I’ll talk about those in just a few minutes. First here are some things I’ve noticed about consistency in two areas that are extremely important to me.

The Starbucks Coffee

For the last week and a half I’ve been stopping at Starbucks every single morning. The main reason being that I needed my caffeine and didn’t feel like making coffee when I got to the ATV, the secondary reason being that I had a gift card…

I’ve never been a huge Starbucks fan. For reasons that have nothing to do with anything, I would usually rather get coffee at McDonalds. But here is the thing about Starbucks coffee. It really isn’t the best coffee ever made – not that its bad or anything.

The best thing about Starbucks coffee… it is incredibly consistent. I know exactly what I’m going to get when I walk in the door and order my grande medium roast coffee with room for cream.

It has been identical – every – single – time. Which is awesome.

The Photographers Portfolio

I love photography, no secret there. In fact I run a weekly show called the CorePresets show, where I show people how I edit photos using Lightroom and Photoshop. Shameless plug aside, I do know, or have heard a world of stuff about photography.

One of the biggest things I’ve heard when I hear people like Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski talk about portfolios is consistency. As they look through a group of pictures and talk about each one (this happens on their weekly show the Grid), the most common thing I hear is this.

“If I was to hire this photographer, I don’t know which photographer I’m getting. They might show up and take a photo like photo X… maybe I hired them because I thought they were going to take a photo like photo Y…”

The importance of consistent work in a photographers portfolio is paramount. When someone hires a photographer, they need to know what they are going to get.

For instance, if I was to hire Joel Grimes to create an image for my sporting goods posters… I know exactly what I’m going to get. That is incredibly helpful as I look to hire someone who will help me send the marketing message that I am looking to send.

Consistency in Rails Development

As I’ve been working on several apps the last few weeks, I’ve starting to notice something kind of interesting.

My apps look like my apps. My classmates apps look like they were made by my classmates. We’ve all got a bit of a different style in how we approach a problem.

It’s like handwriting or a finger print. We each do things “our way.” From the styling of the app in a browser to the way the code is written, commented on and various other aspects of how an app is built – although we’ve all learned from the same person, we all do things a bit differently.

In a way that means that I am already being consistent in how I approach development, structure and syntax. However I also believe that this is an area I want to try to work on, because there is room for me to grow in consistently doing things better.

Actually that is one of the most difficult things about learning to develop apps here at the Iron Yard. The learning curve is impressively steep. I look at stuff I wrote just last week and realize how much better it could have been written. Now I’m torn between whether I should go back and work on those older projects and cleaning them up, or just continue to try to get better and let my more recent work speak for itself.

At any rate. I believe consistency is extremely important.

Just like I want to know how my coffee is going to taste or how my photography is going to be done… People want to know what they are going to get when they hire you (or me) to build their web app.

Let’s give them a round of consistency.