Code for the Exit Ramp

Who wants to click the same button everyday? Think about scaling out when you are developing & code for the exit ramp.

Transcript

Welcome back to my podcast, Scaling Out.

Creating spaghetti code and complicated logic might be seen as over engineering, but I have seen some consultants code themselves job security this way. It boils me up, because I couldn’t imagine writing myself into a job just to make myself indispensable to support the same thing forever and ever. How boring! And really, isn’t this limiting your revenue stream? In the spirit of ‘Scaling Out’, couldn’t you expand your customer list by building something and offering support if something breaks later, that way you can build the next cool thing for another customer, sell them support, and do it again & again & again for more customers? Plus if you are building something that rarely breaks, your support level isn’t that bad. Scaling out then increases the revenue stream. So if that’s your goal, how do you document your code in order to escape? There is a balancing act here, first you have to code logic to keep it from breaking, but if you over engineer it you are stuck there. The 80-20 Pareto Principle might be a good fit here, which for software development means that you should code 80% of the requirements with 20% of the programming. That means focus on the programming that matters, addressing the majority of requirements. The complicated features that might not even be used should be placed at a lower priority than the minimum viable requirements to make the solution just work. 

And ALWAYS document the programming well. This doesn’t mean an inline comment within the code on what the next step is for, but comments on WHY the next step is even there. And generate a design document that is updated throughout development so that it ultimately becomes the developer’s guide to the solution should changes be required in the future. 

Ultimately, youre programming a system to exit safety and orderly. As you develop, plan & execute for the exit ramp. This saves everyone, but more importantly it saves you from the boring.

Thanks again for listening. Until next time, stay safe everyone!