Do you suffer from floccinaucinihilipilification?
When you talk to your boss about refactoring code, do they exhibit floccinaucinihilipilification? If so, you might struggle to get approval for the project.
(In case, like me, you haven’t heard of “floccinaucinihilipilification,” it means “the act of estimating something as worthless.” Now we both know! <grin>)
When I read this definition, I saw a bit of myself in there. In the past, I’ve estimated things as worthless which maybe I shouldn’t have.
- Time developers spend futzing with their environment
- Rework of sloppy code
- Fixes due to changing requirements
- Rework due to a misunderstanding of the requirements
I didn’t talk about it openly, but I secretly estimated these activities as worthless. I’m sure you can spot where I was wrong in each case.
What do you estimate as worthless? Would your team agree?