Recently I was working for a project on a client where they wanted the project to be Live for a certain portion of time during the day - so for example between 9AM and 2PM, or 12PM and 3PM, or so on and so forth.
While implementing this feature, a thought struck me - what if the client wanted to have a period that ran past midnight - so for example between 11PM and 2AM? At this point, the intelligent thing to do would have been to pick up the phone and call the client to ask. Instead, I thought to myself - well, even if they haven't asked for it now, they might need it later. Besides, I could build a decent set of unit tests and use them to catch all the edge cases, right?
Wrong.
What ended up happening was that I spent many hours writing the unit tests to capture the many edge cases that came with crossing the midnight deadline during a time period. I spent even more time writing the code to deal with them. The project went over-budget thanks to that extra time I spent, and the client never ended up using the added feature. After a few months in production, the client scrapped the project (albeit for unrelated reasons).
Lessons learned: unless you're very strongly confident that you need to build something for the future, don't do it. Don't fall prey to what-if's. Remember: YAGNI - you aren't going to need it. And if you do need it, you can build it later, when it's accounted for in the budget. Finally, don't be afraid to pick up the phone and ask a question. It makes everyone's life easier.
While implementing this feature, a thought struck me - what if the client wanted to have a period that ran past midnight - so for example between 11PM and 2AM? At this point, the intelligent thing to do would have been to pick up the phone and call the client to ask. Instead, I thought to myself - well, even if they haven't asked for it now, they might need it later. Besides, I could build a decent set of unit tests and use them to catch all the edge cases, right?
Wrong.
What ended up happening was that I spent many hours writing the unit tests to capture the many edge cases that came with crossing the midnight deadline during a time period. I spent even more time writing the code to deal with them. The project went over-budget thanks to that extra time I spent, and the client never ended up using the added feature. After a few months in production, the client scrapped the project (albeit for unrelated reasons).
Lessons learned: unless you're very strongly confident that you need to build something for the future, don't do it. Don't fall prey to what-if's. Remember: YAGNI - you aren't going to need it. And if you do need it, you can build it later, when it's accounted for in the budget. Finally, don't be afraid to pick up the phone and ask a question. It makes everyone's life easier.
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