planning
The Thing-deadline calculus
The best-laid plans
But bulldozers move mountains
Good design is redesign
Obsessed with absolute numbers
A warning against the limitations of my own prescriptions
The plan must anticipate all that is needed
Many a corner office
Individuals matter
Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake
The value-destroying effect of arbitrary date pressure on code
An Article by Gandalf HudlowThe mandate from above is clear, just get it done! Avoid everything that's in the way: all advice, all expertise, all discovery efforts that detract from hitting the Date™!
What these organizations don't realize is that all software change can be modeled as three components: Value, Filler and Chaos. Chaos destroys Value and Filler is just functionality that nobody wants. When date pressure is applied to software projects, the work needed to remove Chaos is subtly placed on the chopping block. Work like error handling, clear logging, chaos & load testing and other quality work is quietly deferred in favor of hitting the Date™.
Hofstadter's Law
An Idea by Douglas HofstadterIt always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Planning doesn't make for better software
A Fragment by Robin RendleMy own time in a Silicon Valley startup has proved this much to be true; planning doesn’t make for better software. In fact today our design systems team doesn’t have sprints, we don’t have tickets or a daily standup. Each day we come to work, figure out what’s the most important thing that we could be doing, and then we—gasp!—actually do it.
Watching so many other teams slowly flail about whilst they plan for quarter 3.2 of subplan A, whilst our team produces more work in a week than they all do combined in a quarter has been shocking to me.
After four years of working in a large startup, I know what I always assumed was true: you don’t need a plan to make a beautiful thing. You really don’t. In fact, there’s a point where overplanning can be a signal of inexperience and fear and bullshit. The scrum board and the sprints and the inane meetings each and every day are not how you build another Super Mario 64.
Instead all you have to do is hire smart people, trust them to do their best work, and then get the hell out of their way.
Yagni
A Definition by Martin FowlerYagni originally is an acronym that stands for "You Aren't Gonna Need It". It is a mantra from Extreme Programming that's often used generally in agile software teams. It's a statement that some capability we presume our software needs in the future should not be built now because "you aren't gonna need it".
Candide
Things cannot be other than as they are
“It is demonstrably true that things cannot be other than as they are. For, everything having been made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose.” — Professor Pangloss
We must cultivate our garden
‘You must have a vast and magnificent estate,’ said Candide to the turk.
‘I have only twenty acres,’ replied the old man; ‘I and my children cultivate them; and our labour preserves us from three great evils: weariness, vice, and want.’
Candide, on his way home, reflected deeply on what the old man had said. ‘This honest Turk,’ he said to Pangloss and Martin, ‘seems to be in a far better place than kings…. I also know,’ said Candide, ‘that we must cultivate our garden.’