Form follows function
Erin Malone has a great article on Boxes and Arrows about not letting tools dictate process. I’ve seen this so often in my work, where someone gets excited about using a particular piece of software and loses sight of the goals that should define the tools. I’m not totally immune to the allure of a great tool myself, but I think I’m pretty good at steering the discussion back to the goals. Especially at the beginning of a project, deciding on the tools first is a great way to lock yourself in to an inappropriate direction. I’ve been pretty fortunate that in most cases, I’ve been able to push discussion back toward goals, and in those cases where I couldn’t, it was generally because I came on to the project far too late to have any impact on that. The decisions had been made long before. Funny thing, few of those projects ever finished.
Posted at 11:31 PM