Asking the Right Questions on a New Software Project
When presented with a new opportunity to build new software, developers often ask themselves questions like: Should we use a micro services architecture? Should we use Terraform as an abstraction to decouple our deployment from a particular cloud, like GCP? Should we move from a multi-repo code storage to monorepo? Should we enforce TDD, or let the coders decide whether to test after building the code? Should we embrace Typescript, or keep using Javascript? Should we use Kubernetes on this project? How important is CI/CD for this project? In software development, it is common for developers to jump into technical questions when presented with a new opportunity to build new software. However, it is crucial to first ask, "What problem are we trying to solve?" and identify the key requirements to ensure the focus remains on the customer problem. We need to remember to ask, "What existing solutions are available to solve this problem?" to avoid wasted effort. R
