> ‘Why did we go into this business? Why are we shutting down this business line? Why are we doing this services migration that's going to take five years?’ literally aren't written down anywhere.”
I see this all the time with my own projects. I try to document my code but what I often fail to write down is WHY. I might write down a decision to change something or to implement a new thing, but I don't write down the why. Why not? Because it is so OBVIOUS at the time the decision is made. It seems like a waste of time to write it down.
Consider also the "5 Whys". When we answer the why we answer it's because we want something particular to happen. But why do we want that particular thing to happen now and always? I don't write those whys down because it seems wasteful and a distraction from being focused on making concrete progress.
I see this all the time with my own projects. I try to document my code but what I often fail to write down is WHY. I might write down a decision to change something or to implement a new thing, but I don't write down the why. Why not? Because it is so OBVIOUS at the time the decision is made. It seems like a waste of time to write it down.
Consider also the "5 Whys". When we answer the why we answer it's because we want something particular to happen. But why do we want that particular thing to happen now and always? I don't write those whys down because it seems wasteful and a distraction from being focused on making concrete progress.
It's human nature.