Re:If it's a nice problem to have, don't solve it now
by davnicwil on Monday August 10, 2020 @12:30PM
(#24111044)
Yeah, your first paragraph is spot on. It's pretty much exactly what I was going to reply to IanCal. Instead I'll just +1 it.
On your second paragraph, 100% agreed. This is really just a useful prioritization heuristic, not a rule, and in some cases other considerations should and will override it.
It's mainly useful just to deliberately and routinely check that instinct to go deep on whatever you're working on when there's a lot of breadth to cover that's more important to get done first.
Re:If it's a nice problem to have, don't solve it now
by IanCal on Monday August 10, 2020 @03:33PM
(#24113126)
Whether the problem is nice to have or not is entirely orthoganal to how important it is to solve.
"Is this feature important, or a nice to have" is the question they want, not "is this problem nice to have?".
Re:If it's a nice problem to have, don't solve it now
by IanCal on Monday August 10, 2020 @03:31PM
(#24113099)
Nice problem to have is just the wrong phrase because it really means something orthoganal to "problems that I should solve now".
> nice problems to have relative to the status quo, so problems that are really only potential problems right now, but could become actual problems if good things happened
But that's not what this very common phrase means.
What they want to say is "nice to haves".
OTOH, I think that it's still a bit wrong to say don't solve them now: if you have a problem that is potentially a business-ending disaster that you won't have time to fix before it destroys your business if it manifests, it doesn't matter if the conditions which would cause it to manifest are otherwise an improvement over your status quo conditions. It still needs fixed before that happens.
Otherwise, yeah, YAGNI applies.