How to Balance Design and Development

The Design Stamina Hypothesis compares teams’ productivity with and without design work. It consists of two axes: cumulative functionality on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. Investing more time in design early on may be beneficial to ensure a clear understanding of the app’s purpose. Yet, the hypothesis assumes developers know when to stop designing and start building, which is a flaw. Developers focus on finishing projects instead of considering future changes. The Design Stamina Hypothesis should focus on setting clear goals for when to focus on design. It’s important to note that developers are designing, and the cost of quality should be considered.

The cost of Object-Oriented Design can increase due to a need for more information and writing to support future guesses. Indirection is the mechanism by which we reduce the complexity of interdependence — the most impactful code changes. Tools like Code Climate can highlight these areas in our code base, analyzing and comparing churns and quality. Business priorities often cause the most strain on engineering teams. To increase profits, we should simplify the business’s most significant aspects. Thus, to keep an application healthy is essential to always refactor and apply design when introducing new changes.

[¹]: Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby