'Just' is banned as a unit of effort
Sitting in a SCRUM meeting, I hear my pet peeve. “I just have to …” someone says. My internal alarm bells go off – NO! I have heard this refrain many times. It rarely ends well.
“Just” is a word we use to trick ourselves that our environment is not complicated. Yes, the concept of the change is simple. The core logic that needs to change is not cimplicated. However the implementation rarely so. So, say you want to ‘just’ make that functionality change – sounds easy. Except:
- The change will require test cases
- The change will require a PR review
- The change may require working with security team to get the appropriate access policy updated – and they are backlogged and have a 3 week lead time
- The change may require adding new configuration variables
- New configuration variables have to be documented
- New configuration variables require updating the build / deploy pipeline to allow for their configuration, or environment-specific configuration files
- The change may require re-evaluating the performance or tuning parameters
- The change may need new metrics emitted
- New metrics need documentation as to their meaning
- New metrics need load testing to understand their behavior and limits and appropriate alarm levels.
In a well organized team the above is not ‘hard’. However, even small changes can snowball. Claiming the change is ‘just’ gives the misleading impression that the time required to perform the entire change is trivial and known. The reality is that more often then not the ‘just’ task ends up being far more than ‘just’. It can still be ‘small’, it can be ‘simple’, but it is not ‘just’.