Building to last, building robust
This week has been somewhat hard and for the same reason, it has left many lessons.
The first thing I want to express is that together with the work team in which I collaborate we have had to row against the current because we lagged a bit with respect to other teams. The delay was due to poor planning and not delegating tasks (it’s very difficult to agree with people to work collaboratively).
Luckily everything has improved a lot with the goodwill of the members and now we have managed to catch up with our deliverables.
Last week I saw this video by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which speaks in great detail about how important it is to build with the vision of thinking not only in the present since there’s a risk of inheriting problems to which they will resume our work in the future. I think this is the most valuable thing I learned in the week since in the project in which I collaborate we made the decision to bet on a course in which most of us felt comfortable, however, this decision affected those who resumed the project in the future as they would have to know about two working methods in case they wanted to understand the whole project (I collaborate only in one part, so my work team is currently divided into two subgroups, one subgroup uses one method and my subgroup wanted to use another).
Although the work carried out did not compromise the result, the truth is that in the future if it was going to cause it to be something very fragile, just as Professor Taleb explains, the larger a task, company, or project, the more susceptible it is to being become fragile and the truth is that this is very easy to ignore. One can always fall into pretexts such as, “I need it fast”, “This is how it works well”, “Later we modify it”, “Have someone else fix it later” and a very long, etc. In general, I think that all this problem lies in the lack of empathy, in this case, the little empathy we had with the people who will eventually resume our work since we are forcing them to know two different methodologies just because it accommodates us in the present.
It may seem like a small thing now, but if this project continues to grow like the way it is expected to, our decision will cause the project to be more and more difficult to change so the error will creep until it eventually bursts and that it’s clearly a very bad thing; I am quite happy that I was able to open my eyes in time, since in the end, we decided to work with a single methodology which implies several things, such as learning everything related to the aforementioned methodology, and of course, in general, I feel afraid of the unknown, but the truth is that I can also say that once you climb that wall that at first feels difficult and extremely high, you end up being better and advancing as a person in any field is always a positive thing, so if you are in front of the Dilemma of going down the easy and known path but that will bring problems in the future or take the difficult, new and unknown path on the other hand, but that in the long run offers more benefits. I ask you please not to take your choice lightly and always act thinking in the ones who come after you, it may even happen that the person who will resume your job in the future is yourself, so don’t play a trick on yourself and think that it is better to work a little more but in the end, get a better result.
Please, always think of others, remember that no one does anything alone, it is through collaboration that great ideas take on not only life but also strength.
