The first week without writing a line of code
Yesterday I was talking about how important it is to slow down at the start of a project.
Greenfield or brownfield, same reflex
A greenfield project? Don’t write a single line of code the first week.
A brownfield project? Same thing.
It can sound counter-intuitive, but that exact moment is when the biggest gains are made: in time, in energy, in money.
Why it pays off so much
The earlier you are in a project, the more expensive bad directions get… and the more profitable good ones become.
And from experience: once you’re knee-deep in the code, you tend to dive straight into the technical details, and lose sight of the essential thing, the why behind each choice.
Slowing down is not sitting around doing nothing
It’s the moment to take the time to:
- understand the project in depth
- choose / challenge the architecture
- decide what should be built, what shouldn’t, and in what order
- understand the business rules
- map out the business domain
- look at what already exists and could be reused
- … and so on
Each of these helps make the right choices, in the right order. That’s how I start whenever I join a project.
We’re talking about 5, 10, 15 days “lost”… against months (easily) gained afterward.
The cost of rushing
And yet, I see too many projects take the wrong direction.
Only yesterday, I put together a quote for 10 days of business modelling… and the client (on a genuinely complex project) answered “no, too expensive, and we want things faster.”
I hope for their sake that they stumble onto the right path by chance… but I already know there is a 9-in-10 chance the project will crash, end up costing twice the planned budget, or come out half broken and full of trouble.
Set the keyboard aside
So on your next project, set the keyboard aside.
And once you think you’re ready? Set it aside for a few more days. Really.
PS: we’re talking here about projects meant to last. If you’re still at the stage of throwaway MVPs to find traction, none of this matters. But when it’s meant to last: go slow and do it well, so you can keep doing it well for a long time (and even faster and faster).