Tactical Tips and Tricks

Software engineers are an optimistic bunch, and as such, we often underestimate the amount of work it takes to fully implement new features or make changes to an existing codebase. A common mistake is to only consider how long it will take to write the code required to create that feature. In which case, we are forgetting to include the time it takes for several important tasks. We often need to spend time refactoring other subsystems to support the changes we're making. This can happen either because we didn't think it would be necessary at the time, or because we thought of a better way to implement it halfway-through which can quickly turn into a rabbit-hole dive of redesign and refactoring if we don't plan sufficiently far ahead. We should also consider the time needed for testing and documentation. Even if a QA team will do a testing...