When you have to code … code! Don't document.

The inspiration for this blog post has very different roots. I have for a long time wanted to write a blog post about the ”working software over documentation” part of theagile manisfesto but could not find a good way to write a blog about it. And then suddenly a podcast I heard yesterday, a book I read last week and and qoute from a movie from 1966 made it all clear: It's all about getting things done.

Yesterday I was listening to the danish tech podcast Harddisken where they had visited the startup weekend  and talked to several of the participants. One of the participants was asked if he was not afraid that once you had told people about your idea in a public forum like the startup weekend that it would be copied by other people and diluted. And he said no – the idea is not the important part – it's about making it happen and that require the correct team – and the startup weekend was a good place to meet smart people that you could recruit for your team. An idea has no value in itself – it is the execution that matters.

Last weekend I stumbled over a book by Joel Spolsky called: ”Smart & get things done”. It adresses how to hire the best programmers which is something that has been a problem in all the companies I have worked at so I eagerly read through it. The thing that is interesting for this blog post is that it is not enough to hire smart people – you have to hire smart people that get things done. Again an emphasis on execution.

The last thing is this scene from the film: ”The good, the bad, and the ugly”. I have had it on my list of stuff that I felt embodied agile and leans pragmatic approach to making software, but could not fit it in. But the other two things put it into context. So when Tuco in the film says: ”If you want to shoot .. shoot! Don't talk.” he is in a way saying that ideas and intentions do not really matter if they are not executed.

And that leads me back to the agilemanisfesto and ”Working software over comprehensive documentation”. This part of the manisfesto is for me all about execution. Beacuse while some documentation is necessary the documentation in itself holds no value – only the working code holds value – and you could probably even expand that to that only working deployed code holds any value. And getting the code done and deployed to the customer that is all about execution. You can have endless good ideas, make tons of documentation but without execution you have no value. And to me that pragmatic getting things done is one of the things that have always attracted me to agile and lean methods, and I find that valuing working software over comprehensive documentation is a good hands on approach to gettngs things done.

So remember: When you have to code … code! Don't document.