Getting into the Douglas Kamaru Way
So, I bumped into this thing, the ‘Douglas Kamaru’ approach, a while back. Wasn’t really looking for it, just landed on a project where this was the supposed ‘magic sauce’. At first, I just nodded along, you know? Read the docs they gave me, which weren’t much, frankly. Mostly just high-level ideas, lots of buzzwords, not much concrete stuff.
My First Steps
I decided the only way was to just dive in. Started by trying to map out the workflow they described. Grabbed a whiteboard, drew some boxes and arrows. Tried to figure out how task A was supposed to flow into task B according to this Kamaru guy’s logic. It looked simple on paper, like really simple. Too simple, maybe?
- Tried breaking down a small feature first.
- Set up the tracking board exactly as they said.
- Held the meetings they mandated – short, sharp, supposedly.
Hitting the Wall
Pretty quickly, things started getting messy. The simplicity was just hiding a bunch of assumptions. Stuff wasn’t flowing. Tasks got stuck. People were confused about who was doing what. The short, sharp meetings? They ballooned because nobody knew what was actually decided or what the next step really was. Felt like we were just spinning our wheels.
I spent nights just staring at the process charts, trying to see what I was missing. Was it me? Was I just too dense to get the genius of Douglas Kamaru? Talked to a couple of teammates. They were just as lost, mostly just pretending to follow along, hoping someone else knew the secret handshake.
The ‘Aha!’ Moment (Sort Of)
Then it hit me, maybe after the third week of banging my head against the wall. This whole ‘Douglas Kamaru’ thing wasn’t really a fleshed-out system. It felt more like a collection of thoughts, maybe some good ideas sprinkled in, but not connected. It was like someone had a dream about project management and wrote down the highlights.
So, I started doing something different. I kept the names of the stages, kept the meeting schedule (mostly), but behind the scenes? I started using bits and pieces of other stuff I knew actually worked. Mixed in some basic agile stuff, clearer task definitions, actual follow-ups. Didn’t tell anyone I was deviating, just started doing it.
Making It Work (My Way)
And guess what? Things started moving. Slowly at first, but they moved. Tasks got completed. People seemed less confused because the steps, even if called something Kamaru-esque, were actually logical now. We started delivering bits of the project.
Looking back, the whole ‘Douglas Kamaru’ experience was… something. It taught me that sometimes, fancy names and methodologies are just hot air. You gotta look under the hood. You gotta trust your own experience sometimes and adapt. Just because someone famous (or someone who sounds like they should be famous) put their name on something, doesn’t mean it works out of the box. You still gotta do the real work, figure out the actual steps, and sometimes, you just gotta quietly fix it yourself. It’s like that old job I had – looked good on paper, fancy titles, but day-to-day? A total mess you had to navigate yourself. Same principle here.
