The other day I, like any grown adult, was relaxing on the couch with one of my Batman comics.  Allow me to quickly set the scene: Batman was in some villain’s hideout, where said villain had built some type of death machine/computer/doomsday device/whatever.  After a few pages of delicious dialogue, Batman deftly let  a batarang fly which, after skimming the baddie’s head, embedded itself in the death machine’s custom built-in, unlabeled keyboard.  This, of course, caused the machine to go into a self-destruct sequence which happened to take just long enough (barely) for our hero to make his escape as an entire mountain blew up.

Everyone has seen this type of thing in a movie or TV show.  But it got me thinking.  Maybe we–we being software developers, hardware engineers and death machine architects–maybe we can do better.  Personally speaking, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to restart a project because frustration got the better of me and I slammed my keyboard down, instantly incinerating everyone else on my team.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the hassle my boss ends up giving me.

Here’s a great example.  The image to the side is a recent project plan I’d been mapping out.  See if you can see where I went wrong.  (Click to enlarge the image.)