What are you waiting for???

The contract has been signed, the training finished and all the company is ready to start using the best development practices known to man – unit testing, TDD, Clean code, pair programming you name it! But there’s just one problem preventing the change from happening…

Or as the good doctor puts it:

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

[Excerpt from Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss]

What could be this place which you ask? It’s the “we don’t have time now – let’s do it later” place.

I usually can see it coming a mile away. After initial work has been done, and the team is waiting to start the next stage/iteration. I get a talk from the team leader/manager/developer and he would tell me that xyz is a good idea, one which we would defiantly use once we release the current version…

I remember one developer tell me that he’s going to start using TDD when developing the next feature – over the course of a year (in which he implemented countless features).

Sometimes the team need the conditions to be just right – enough time (which you’ll never get), the right person to come back from vacation (and would have enough time between answering his emails and catching up with work?), some developers are waiting for permission (to do refactoring? or write unit tests – why not ask for permission to use integers instead?) – in this point I expect someone to tell me that he need to wait for the next moon eclipse so he can invoke the old gods and make sure that the new code would work.

But all these reasons (read: excuses) have one thing in common – they all make sure that we’re not leaving our warm and fuzzy comfort zone.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

[Excerpt from Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss]

And I’ve seen it happen countless times. It always comes down to – good idea, we defiantly need it, not now…

I really don’t understand the big deal with waiting – every single change in your code can be reverted (can has source control?) and you should be able to verify that your code works (if not make plans to fix that– quick). I’ve seen teams refuse to make a change that would reduce the amount of work they do (not to mention improve quality) and keep working twice as hard instead.

Instead break the cycle – ask yourself: “how can I make sure that tomorrow I won’t make the mistakes I did today”. Try something new – you have absolutly nothing to loose.

No! That’s not for you!

Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky.

[Excerpt from Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss]

Happy coding…