Pretend You're Leaving

Justin occasionally spends a few moments thinking to himself, “If I was leaving tomorrow and showing my replacement everything they had to know to take over, what would I be embarrassed about handing over? What project or site or module just isn't where it should be?”

It's likely that something—some project, module, web site, section, or configuration—is going to come to mind, something that was not finished right, was not completed to your own standards or those of your organization, or something that is just so slapdash that you need to finish it the right way.

This situation commonly happens when a project is in support, and not in active development. While developing a project is a proactive task—you lead the team that is seeking out what needs to be built and are building it—support is often a reactive process, in that you and your team act only when there is something that needs to be fixed or the client asks for something new.