Rules are liberating

Rules are liberating

I was watching a video by PK Narayanan on setting up a coaching business, and he made a statement that resonated with me: "Rules are liberating." It means, “You can automate many tasks when you have a set of rules, routines, or processes. This liberates you to focus on what you are passionate about.”

When and how did I cultivate this belief?

It started with C-DOT, where we received six months of intensive training. The most interesting part was the six-week software development workshop. They divided us into teams and asked us to develop a feature for a telecom switch, the good old PSTN switch.

We had to follow a strict Waterfall V Model. Like many freshers, we complained a lot because we had to generate many documents and had only three days for coding in a six-week project. We cribbed, made fun of the organisation, and cracked jokes about our seniors, but we did not have a choice. In hindsight, I consider it military-like training for software developers.

And at the end of the project, the results were remarkable:

? We created a lot of documentation and reviewed it with mentors to stay on the right track.

? We completed over three thousand lines of code among three developers within three days.

? We reviewed the entire code among the three of us on a Sunday before we started unit testing.

? We finished the project on time and with high quality. We gave one of our switching lab slots to another team because everything worked perfectly the first time.

? We didn't have a separate QA team, so we designed our unit, integration, and system tests to ensure everything worked as expected. On a side note, there was no concept of a separate QA team, and it used to hurt us if others found a defect in our code.

? Our peers recognised our teamwork, and we got an award based on our peers’ ratings for the project.

After this project, throughout my career, including a later part in C-DoT, I found that each organisation had a different level of process orientation.

In most cases, software engineers see processes or rules as obstacles. Today, many engineers don't even write design documents.

My standard interview questions are for senior engineers and above:

? Do you write design documents?

? If not, do you review design documents?

? If not, what should be included in a good design document?

Unfortunately, I rarely get good answers to these questions.

Over time, I also learned the opposite: why it's sometimes important to refrain from writing design documents and why good programmers need to constantly navigate and curate code.

However, a team's productivity could be improved by emphasising the need for and importance of processes and introducing systematic and just-right processes. A good-quality document, mainly requirements, architecture, and design, can help align the team and clearly explain what we are doing, why, and how.

I worked for a highly process-oriented organisation and an organisation with literally no processes. Both would benefit from having the “right” processes driven and accepted by the teams.

Since "process" can have a negative connotation, I started using "best practices," which is essentially what processes are.

I often use Bangalore traffic as an example of what can go wrong when rules are not followed. I also show a video of a UK roundabout to demonstrate how rules can help a whole country function without traffic signals and cops.

Imagine not needing traffic signals and cops—wouldn't that save much money? Of course, some might argue that people would lose jobs. The point is that everyone should aim for a higher level of work rather than just surviving and doing the same thing, which can be automated or simplified.

If we want a developed India, we must thrive, not just survive.

Lastly, I often share Dhoni’s YouTube Video (https://youtube.com/shorts/Yex_gZLcmb4?si=O5ycno7MEJrRa_oc), in which he talks about focusing on the process rather than the results.

In summary, the right rules and processes can be liberating when followed. They allow one to work on more interesting and creative projects and focus on those projects without worrying about chores.