Often, when we reach the step that when discussing a bigger change we initially wouldn't have agreed on, once we got there in smaller steps, it's often not a point of contingency anymore because we realize our assumptions were wrong or that we didn't really understand each other.

"No one is going to take you serious if your book is less than 350 pages long"

Let me think about it.
Hmmmm...yeah, people will vomit more (even worse) code.

That's to say, teams that struggle with refactoring skills are also teams that most likely struggle with design skills, because tapping into a rich pool of domain and design insights generated as you refactor in small, safe steps is out of their reach.

2/2

I wanna join!

But then I won't have the chance to practice my skills for reverse engineering understanding from the implicit code!

Sorry, it was a response to this LinkedIn post, which provides more context.

There's a feedback loop that feeds from making the changes to the quality of the mental model of the problem and domain

In doing the work, and if you listen carefully, you get to discover more about the domain and problem that feeds back into the way that you do the work.

2/2

So, the point is not reducing the cost per se. It's fixing the problem that the high cost of change pointed at, which in turns dissolves the problem of the high cost.

4/4

In a bunch of cases, the high cost of change serves a purpose. It points to a problem, addressing which reduces the cost that was pointing at it.

3/4

And my experience tells me that there are a lot of the latter ones that for lots of teams/orgs go under the radar, deferring addressing painful problems for a way longer time than they should.

2/4