Understand Principles behind Practices
From WikiContent
m (Understand Why moved to Understand Principles behind Practices) |
|||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| - | + | Development methods and techniques have principles and practices. The principles describe the underlying ideas and values of the method. The practices are what you do to realize them. | |
| - | + | Following practices (without deep understanding) allows you to quickly try something new, and by simply working differently you can improve what you are doing. Being disciplined about changing how you work is essential to overcome the inertia of your old ways. Over time you will discover situations where the a practice seems to be getting in your way. An understanding of underlying principles allows you to make decisions about how to apply a practice: for example, you may come to a different understanding of how to Pair Program if you thought that the reason for Pair Programming was to save money on computers, as opposed to having the benefit of real time code reviews. | |
| - | Following | + | Following a practice without understanding can can lead to trouble too: Test Driven Development can simplify code and make development less expensive. But writing overly complicated, or inappropriate tests can increase the complexity of the code, and increase the cost of the or writing the wrong test because you want to code "test first." Writing detailed tests early about an aspect of the application that you know will change frequently can increase the costs to make a simple change. |
| - | Being excessively dogmatic about how things are done can also erode innovation. In addition to understanding the principles behind a practice, question whether the principles and practices make sense. | + | Being excessively dogmatic about how things are done can also erode innovation. In addition to understanding the principles behind a practice, question whether the principles and practices make sense. On the other-hand, trying to customize a process with without understanding the principles it, and how its practices relate can set you up for failure. The cliche example is "doing XP" by skipping documentation and doing none of the other practices. |
| + | When trying something new: | ||
| + | * Start by following best practices as close to the "book" as possible. Resist the temptation to customize; you risk losing the benefits of a new way of working, and of reverting to your old ways under a new name. | ||
| + | * Once you have had some experience evaluate whether your execution of a practice is in line with its principles, and then adopt the practices to work better in your environment. | ||
| - | When adopting a new practice of development method: | ||
| - | * Resist the temptation to customize the practice early on; you risk losing the benefits of a new way of working. | ||
| - | * Once you have had some experience evaluate whether your execution of a practice is in line with its principles. | ||
| - | Following rules dogmatically can be helpful when you are trying something new to force you to change your mindset, and you can get into trouble customizing the rules before you have had a chance to change your mindset. And shared practices and guidelines should be in place to encourage communication and allow you to not worry about tasks that are secondary to your primary goals. But following rules blindly can cause problems too. | ||
| - | |||
| - | For example, having rules about coding styles are very useful when it comes to allowing others to quickly understand your code, and team members not following agreed upon coding guidelines can cause others to waste time. Yet indenting code is not the highest value activity a programmer can do, so code formatting guidelines that can be automated strike a good balance between team productivity and individual productivity. | ||
| - | |||
| - | When you are working, periodically take the time to reflect on whether "what has worked in the past" is still the right thing. Whenever you see someone on your team doing the "wrong" thing, take the time to understand the reason behind what they are doing. Sometimes they may be falling off the rails. Sometimes that may be seeing something from a different perspective. | ||
Revision as of 19:41, 2 January 2009
Development methods and techniques have principles and practices. The principles describe the underlying ideas and values of the method. The practices are what you do to realize them.
Following practices (without deep understanding) allows you to quickly try something new, and by simply working differently you can improve what you are doing. Being disciplined about changing how you work is essential to overcome the inertia of your old ways. Over time you will discover situations where the a practice seems to be getting in your way. An understanding of underlying principles allows you to make decisions about how to apply a practice: for example, you may come to a different understanding of how to Pair Program if you thought that the reason for Pair Programming was to save money on computers, as opposed to having the benefit of real time code reviews.
Following a practice without understanding can can lead to trouble too: Test Driven Development can simplify code and make development less expensive. But writing overly complicated, or inappropriate tests can increase the complexity of the code, and increase the cost of the or writing the wrong test because you want to code "test first." Writing detailed tests early about an aspect of the application that you know will change frequently can increase the costs to make a simple change.
Being excessively dogmatic about how things are done can also erode innovation. In addition to understanding the principles behind a practice, question whether the principles and practices make sense. On the other-hand, trying to customize a process with without understanding the principles it, and how its practices relate can set you up for failure. The cliche example is "doing XP" by skipping documentation and doing none of the other practices.
When trying something new:
- Start by following best practices as close to the "book" as possible. Resist the temptation to customize; you risk losing the benefits of a new way of working, and of reverting to your old ways under a new name.
- Once you have had some experience evaluate whether your execution of a practice is in line with its principles, and then adopt the practices to work better in your environment.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3
Back to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know home page
