A Working Definition for True Workflow Improvement
Doing more of the right things with less or the same. Truly less or the same.
Anti-patterns to true workflow improvement
These are listed to help me be vigilant. Things that look like true workflow improvement often turn out to be one of these antipatterns.
Doing more of the right things with more
This category could also be called the “naive life hack”.
To avoid leg swelling, stand on your head for 3 minutes a day. To keep the sink clean, apply some treatment every time you wash the dishes. To keep the codebase clean, run a typechecker, and a linter, and a formatter*.
Each of these things provides a benefit, at the cost of giving yourself a new job.
*Developers would respond “wait wait wait you can automate those!“. This is true. But does the automation add code volume? How much? Does maintaining the automation constitute new manual work? The typechecker, linter, and formatter are not the “with more”. The effort required to maintain them is.
Doing more of the right things with less, well actually, more
This one is insidious and difficult to avoid without forethought. This happens when I think I have checked that my workflow improvement is not a naive life hack, only to find that it has some hidden associated cost.
Doing different with different
Also known as Shiny Object Syndrome.
Doing less with less
This category could also be called naive minimalism.