Preparation - lessons from the kitchen

Most Sunday mornings, I make gluten-free waffles for breakfast (see recipe at the end of this post). I like to get everything out (ingredients and utensils) before I start.

This seems to make the process go faster and smoother. There is an efficiency in focusing on getting everything first, and then cooking.

So I was wondering if there is an analogy to product development. What are the ingredients for product development?

1. clear definition of the goal and next steps
2. any relevant documentation
3. tools (editor, CAD tool, issue tracking systems, build systems, tests, release processes, etc.)
4. collaboration with others on the team (issues, PRs, discussions, etc.)

Is this scattered all over the place, or can you quickly assemble all of this and hit the ground running?

It helps to organize your work in a notes system. This has links to relevant information and notes so you immediately have all the relevant context.

For some tasks like code review, tools can prepare the task for us. Github/Gitea/Gitlab pull request (PR) workflows have the code, discussion, and proposed changes all in one place.

With any task, having all the ingredients at hand makes for a nice result! Preparation leads to focus.

Gluten-free waffle recipe: