Avoiding Classic Mistakes

Every so often, I find it helpful to revisit McConnell's list of classic development process mistakes, and the accompanying case study.

"Look, Mike," Tomas said. "I can hand off my code today and call it 'feature complete', but I've probably got three weeks of cleanup work to do once I hand it off." Mike asked what Tomas meant by "cleanup." "I haven't gotten the company logo to show up on every page, and I haven't gotten the agent's name and phone number to print on the bottom of every page. It's little stuff like that. All of the important stuff works fine. I'm 99-percent done."

This is the phenomenon McConnell likens to Gilligan's Island. Every week there's some new, crazy scheme to escape the island, but at the end of the episode, the castaways always end up stuck on the island for another week. Classic mistakes are classic precisely because they're so seductive. You have to actively recognize when you're falling into one of these traps.

Making mistakes is inevitable, but repeating the same ones over and over doesn't have to be. Try to make all-new, thrilling, spectacular mistakes!

* Which is, crazily enough, coming back as a new reality television show. How incredibly apropos!

Posted by Jeff Atwood    View blog reactions