0011: Make Small Steps

Finishing a task is a daunting challenge. It is not easy to figure out where to start, not to lose direction, and get to the finish.

You can apply this rule on different levels. You can divide large work items into smaller tasks. You can split single routine into many smaller ones.

Tasks

Splitting large task into smaller ones provides several advantages:

• you can estimate required effort more precisely
• you can split work among multiple people
• you can better track progress
• you can have a feeling of accomplishment more often

Scrum recommends to have tasks smaller than 1 day.

Coding

Breaking down your task into several smaller methods makes your life easier. When you are implementing each method individually, you can:

• figure out what type of input is easy to digest and what type of output will be easily digestible by callers
• focus on expected inputs and outputs
• make the function more testable

Related

• Be Open
• Start Simply
• Simply Start