The Interwebs are filled with all sorts of great team advice.

“Sprints are essential!”

“Pair programming is better than code review.”

“Mob programming is better than pair programming.”

“All production code should be developed with Test-Driven Development.”

“Pull requests are only useful for low-trust situation.”

“Everyone should turn on their camera during a Zoom meeting.”

“Never manually log into a production server.”

Some of these I’ve even said (sometimes on this very email list)!

And no doubt every one of these served someone, and made the life of their team better in some way, otherwise they wouldn’t be suggesting we adopt the same advice.

The problem, though, with every one of these pieces of advice is missing context. And every one of these pieces of advice can be completely wrong in some situations.

Some of these should be seen as aspirational goals. Others might be stepping stones on our way toward our aspirations.

Whenever you see advice presented as a universal truth, remember that context matters. And if you see me offer this kind of advice, I’m hereby giving you an open invitation to call me out on it and challenge my context!