Improvement of Daily Work: The Third Ideal

Hi,

In Chinese, there is a famous saying:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

We know this in software development too. We keep complaining about the mistakes we made back then.

“Should do that someday.”

This is a sentence that comes up in every second retrospective.

Technical debt is piling up. “Should do that someday.”

The daily usually takes too long. “Should do that someday.”

The application takes several minutes to start. “Should do that someday.”

Tests are only partially executable locally. “Should do that someday.”

Improvement of Daily Work

The third ideal from The Unicorn Project.

And it’s all about that. “Should do that someday” must not be a mantra. Technical debt is reduced. That’s a priority.

The architecture is continually developed and modernized. Developers deliver results faster and are happier.

In the end, everyone wins - the business and the people.

The Boy Scout Rule is one of the principles that strike the same chord. The Boy Scouts say: “Always leave a place better than you found it.”

If you’re working on a piece of code to accomplish your task, stick to it. On a small scale: Choose more suitable names for variables and functions, adapt the syntax to current rules, correct the existing documentation.

But also on a larger scale: Refactor complicated methods that you had to understand yourself. Add a test to implicitly document the code. Or outsource parts of the code entirely to create a clear boundary.

Your application will never be perfect. But if you make it a little better every day, it stays manageable.

P.S. Do you know someone who might enjoy this newsletter? Then tell them about it, or forward this email.

Rule the Backend,

~ Marcus