• Define what is it you want to communicate
• Define why it is you want to communicate what you want to communicate
• Write down all the topics you want to cover
• Organize the topics in a structured manner (i.e., an outline)
• Write a draft
• Expand the points of the draft
• Review the grammar with LLMs
• Use keywords services to find topics that may be related and interesting to cover

• Define the audience
• Define the purpose
• Define the assumptions
• Provide a way to contact the author
• Provide a way to ask additional questions

Question

How do I improve my processes?

Answer

First and foremost, to improve any process you need to start by writing the process down. All the steps or things you need to consider should be written in a document. This will allow you to review this document over time and improve it as you find ways to make the process better.

When you perform the process, look at your document and see whether you are applying all of the steps you wrote down. Identify the steps that are more critical than others, in which order you complete them, how long it takes you to accomplish them, whether some steps are sometimes relevant, etc. You want to capture information about the process as you are going through it in order to identify sources of improvement. If a step takes the majority of your time in a process, ask yourself whether this is expected and whether it would be possible to optimize or automate this step in order to reduce the time spent on it.

If possible, share your processes with others. Have them share with you how they would go about doing the same things you do and take notes. Some of the things that may be different between you and others are the order in which you accomplish the steps, which steps you consider critical and how much time is spent on each step.

Even though some of the processes you follow on a daily basis may appear trivial to you, you might end up realizing that those processes are quite complex in nature, especially if you need to write them down.

Try playing around with doing steps in parallel vs doing steps sequentially and see which one is more efficient.

In order to improve your processes, you need to define what it is you want to improve. In my case, I want my processes to be efficient (doing things right) and effective (doing the right things). Compared to myself, a process is improved if I need less time to accomplish it while producing the same quality of results or if for the same amount of time I produce higher quality of results.

Run your program with python -m cProfile -o profile.cprofile my-script.py

Install snakeviz (uv pip install snakeviz) to visualize the generated profile.

snakeviz profile.cprofile

Alternative approach

Install pyprof2calltree to convert the cprofile to a kcachegrind compatible profile.

pyprof2calltree -i profile.cprofile -o callgrind.profile.cprofile

References

• https://benbernardblog.com/tracking-down-a-freaky-python-memory-leak/
• https://tech.buzzfeed.com/finding-and-fixing-memory-leaks-in-python-413ce4266e7d
• https://varblog.org/blog/2018/05/24/profiling-and-optimizing-machine-learning-model-training-with-pytorch/

• Keep all RFCs under a single location
• Uniquely identify RFCs
• Use a shared template
  • Editor: Name <email>
  • Status: Draft/Review/Approved/Abandoned/Implemented
  • Required approvers: Name <email> (why), Name <email> (why), ...
  • Approvers: Name <email> (date), Name <email> (date), ...
  • Created on: <date>
  • Updated on: <date>
  • Overview: A high level description of what you're describing in the document
  • Background/Context: Context relevant to understanding the document
  • Problem description: Describe what you are currently cannot do and want to be able to do
  • Motivation/Why: Why is it relevant to solve this problem now?
  • Drawbacks/Why not: What are the downsides of solving this problem?
  • Proposed solution: What is the best solution proposed?
  • Alternative solutions: What are the alternative solutions considered and why aren't they the proposed solution?
  • Impact and risks: What will be the impact of this change on existing systems, processes, or stakeholders?
  • Unresolved questions: What are the questions that need to be answered but don't have an answer to yet?
  • References: Documents/URLs that can be useful to consult
• If a RFC is abandoned, the reasons why should be made explicit in the document

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments
• https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blob/master/0000-template.md
• https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Checklist_Request_for_Change_RFC
• Sourcegraph RFC template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TRVmwpLzTgYWhBqPwkSWpzPYvXI3Z2miJSmBN2G7ygc/edit
• https://about.sourcegraph.com/handbook/engineering/rfcs
• https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/scaling-engineering-teams-via-writing-things-down-rfcs/
• https://github.com/golang/proposal/blob/master/design/TEMPLATE.md

Repositories with RFCs

• https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs
• https://github.com/reactjs/rfcs
• https://github.com/yarnpkg/rfcs