DLL Hell was a thing. When you get into the weeds it’s still there. Never assume everyone is and/or can be on the latest and greatest versions of hardware and software. Deprecate the interfaces, don’t break them. Prompt for the upgrade if you need it BEFORE the installation happens. Developers deserved simple lives too!
Bugs happen. It is part of software development and coding. If you’re software and your code does not have any bugs associated to it, then you’re not pushing yourself. You’re playing it safe. You’re not pushing the envelope. Make the bugs, log them, revel them – make your code better. Than show it to someone and start the process all over again.
Do you have an ETA? Do you have an SLA? I’m not talking about company-wide time-to-respond options, I’m talking about your own internal options that govern your own operations and how you respond to people. Is it a knee-jerk response? Is it last minute? Is it immediate acknowledgment? How do you respond and how do you want to respond is what matters and it’s all up to you.
What is your line in stand? The hill you’ll die on. Your last straw. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) be as dramatic as any of the above, but knowing your threshold, your limit, is what it will help you when things go wrong. When things are going bad, we enter into the “one more” syndrome – where incrementally “one more” thing will not hurt us until one day we wake up burnt out and overloaded. Know…
You don’t need everything, everywhere all at once. You don’t need to go full waterfall. You do need to know what you’re building. Why you’re building it. And who you’re building it for. If you’re not answering those 3 questions and keep trickling out the information as you receive, what you’ll end up with is a trickled-down app that kind of does what you want, for some of the people but they don’t know why…