If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I’d spend four hours sharpening the ax.

-Abraham Lincoln

I keep this quote posted on my computer at work as a simple reminder of my overall management philosophy – plan once, revise & tweak the plan, revise again, and THEN implement. In the race to deliver a product, there’s always the temptation to just do “something.” And the problem we invariably run into shortly thereafter is fixing a poorly designed and poorly implemented product. Which takes time away from other great new products and has the distinctly tenuousness effect of giving both the development team and the company itself a huge black eye in the eyes of the customer. And once you’ve let down the customer, earning their trust again is 10 times as difficult.

Software development does not have to take an eternity. But it should always be done with methodical design and implementation, even if it means that the really “whizz-bang” features are delayed to version two. Without a solid foundation upon which to build, projects are doomed to ongoing revisions to version one, rather than focusing on enhancements for version four, or version six, or version 10.

Think first. Then go for it.