When the rain comes, prepare to get wet.

Tuesday the sixth of June, two thousand and seventeen.

The Rain Came.

And I mean this both in the very physical, weather based sense, along with the philosophical damp that accompanies it.

Gardening was the plan for the day. Well, actually, I’m no gardener. But hacking back weeds and bushes to make way for things to come still counts. Out of all of the thought, planning, and preparation that I’ve done, I may be about to be scuppered by the great British weather.

Staring out of the window at the clouds - this is an exercise I recommend for all and I’m going to turn this into an object lesson.

“When the rain comes, prepare to get wet” ?

Hows that for a thought? I could of course, refuse to take no for an answer. In every challenge we meet there is the option to press on, uncompromising, undeviating. Keep your eyes on the prize. This is a work ethic that will see you through a lot of problems - if you do keep on buggering on you can maintain a lot of momentum.

I’ve had this both ways in the past, in humility have maintained reliability and yet at other times only pride and resentment have driven my steps. In pressing on, there are debts you can incur to your future self and a moment of introspection is recommended before you work in the rain.

Maybe the lesson here is

“In days of sun prepare for rain” ?

I could have spent an extra hour or two yesterday banking up the time and getting ahead so that I could flex around bumps in the road. There are times with any project you should do this, and times when it will only make work for yourself.

For example, putting extra effort in so that you become exhausted can cause a disaster. We all remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare. However, setting yourself a strong foundation by getting ahead early buys you flexibility to spend later.

But then, perhaps there is a more potent lesson on risk-management.

“If you need sun, bet on rain”

This is more straightforward that it sounds. When I say bet on rain, I don’t mean a colloquial expectation that things won’t go your way. I mean stack your chips so that you actively benefit from it. In my case, I had to sort fuel, choose between some grades of steel for different projects, estimate the quantities to order, delivery dates.. stuff that benefits from me being indoors for projects I’ll post about soon. I didn’t just make use of the rain, I benefited from it.

If the analogy is not apparent these lessons apply to software development, or any project work, as evenly as they do gardening. There are times when you should maintain momentum, there are times when you should push ahead and times to consolidate. But perhaps most of all, sometimes software needs to bet on rain. Parameterise from above, rely on return values and dispatch so that when it rains you can benefit from the inherent flexibility you have engineered.