8th of March 2021 — Kill your darlings

At the beginning of the project, I sometimes suffered from a naive mindset. It would tell me that I knew where we were at in our planning, that I understood the way we were headed and that I exactly knew what the product would look like. I wrote the steps, the milestones and the deadlines. Only to discover that I knew nothing.

And thus, I adjusted the product, the planning, the steps and the milestones. Only to discover that this road was also not the one that should be traveled.

Tools, such as mockups and steps, provide guidelines and a mutual understanding of a moment in time. Even though these tools change (and keep changing in the years to come, I am sure now), they are important to keep all eyes in the same direction (until someone looks away and discovers a new road).

It also means letting go of the road or idea you really wanted to hold onto. It just does not work sometimes. Welcome to agile!

Kill your darlings: it might be the most cliché phrase I know, but it still hurts every time. As it should: otherwise there was not enough passion and dedication in the idea to begin with. And so, I hope it never gets any easier.