Dave Donaldson

This afternoon I took my kids to watch the movie Cars again (for the third time). Like my kids, I'm a huge fan of all Pixar movies, albeit for different reasons. They like it for the cartoon aspect of the movies, but I'm into them for the original stories and the attention to detail (ok, I can't lie, I like them for the cartoon aspect as well). I clearly remember watching the first Toy Story and remember thinking to myself, "My God, they even put scuff marks on the base boards of Andy's room!" His room had that "lived-in" look, where Pixar obviously borrowed from George Lucas' thought process when building the spaceships for the first Star Wars movie. You got the distinct sense that the X-Wings and Star Destroyers had seen several years of service due to their burn marks and other battle scars. (Little known fact: George Lucas sold Pixar to Steve Jobs for $10M just before Pixar starting creating the first Toy Story)

The other thing that comes to mind when I watch any Pixar movie is the creativity that went into making them. I always come away from watching a Pixar movie with an urge to *create*. I don't know what it is exactly, but the urge is strong and my mind races for hours afterwards with ideas of things I could/should be working on. What new software could I develop that would benefit lots of people? What new features can I add to CodeKeep to give it that *wow* factor? Things like that.

Back to the attention to detail. My team hears me preach about this all the time, but the one true thing that separates an awesome software development team from an average one is their attention to detail. Attention to detail is how you create a *polished* piece of software. You know what I'm talking about. It's got tooltips and well thought out shortcut keys. The tab order for data entry fields has been optimized for a better user experience. The fonts and colors are consistent for everything. The icons are professional looking and make sense. Stuff like that. These are the things that separate the average from the truly exceptional.

Attention to detail also creates the perception of a higher quality application. It's not always the case, but usually is. When I get up in the morning and my mind starts to focus on the day ahead, these are the things I think about. How can I make this app better? And sometimes more importantly, how can I get my team to think this way as well? That's always a challenge because a lot of developers aren't built that way, but that's OK. We find ways to work through it.

Just keep attention to detail in mind as you build your apps. You and your users will be better off for it.