Tips for Programmers: Prioritize

The process of developing is one that entails a massive amount of decisions to be made each and every day. From smaller ones like breaking up code, centralizing it, or refactoring, to bigger ones referring to problems the require complex approaches to be solved, a developer’s work is full of twists and turns that can some times blindside you. Time and effort management are of extreme importance for anyone working with code on a professional level. Prioritizing your workflow is a necessary step in order to ensure maximization of your capabilities. Which bugs should be investigated first, which issues should be dealt with in what way, which path should be followed into reaching a conclusion? These are decisions developers are faced with every day and though it may not seem like it, they may prove to be as vital as dealing with a vital production issue. These decisions are directly linked with how much time ends up being invested in building, testing releasing and maintaining a feature. When in doubt as to how much time to spend on a certain issue, think like your boss. Not the guy in charge of you development team, but rather his own boss, the guy on top of the food chain. More often than not, company CEOs, even tech companies’ CEOs, have little to do with tech, or coding and programming. They’re money men, accountants slash managers who know more about bottom lines, that the stuff the sell to get those bottom lines. And that’s not meant as a bad thing. They’re there, because their good at what they do, and being good at what they do, is what keeps you in a position to put bread on your table by actually coding and programming and developing. So when faced with decisions that may impact the way you proceed in a certain project, try and put yourself in you CEO’s shoes. Try and approach it in terms of time, effort, value and cost. And keep in mind that too much refactoring, and uncalled for complexity in both your developing process and the end-product’s features, can be a serious hazard in the software business.