Summary
It can be very easy for someone to get caught up in how to do something versus actually doing something. Overthinking is a very common thing among programmers. Sometimes, it's wise to just accept a certain level of work is needed for your workflow and then scale up and extend as much as needed later on as the need arises. While gathering requirements is important to obtain a clear understanding of what it is you are trying to achieve, many of the steps and concepts discussed in this chapter can be thought of as just another tool in your toolbox, or in other words, the right tool for the right job.
Things such as containerizing your project with Docker can be easily added to your workflow and deployment routines later on. The same can be said if you need to add additional environments to your workflow later on. New developers could easily be given a new branch as the need also arises. Teams who dedicate one person to manually run, build, and test tasks can always automate their tasks later on when work begins to pile up. Pipelines can be created even after you have been developing a project for a while. However, other decisions, such as choosing what framework to use on your frontend, can prove to be disastrous if you decide to change the technology halfway through the development life cycle.
What is known as agile development is the process of an ever-changing and always fluid development environment. This is where many different collaborators share ideas and those ideas often change over time, meaning that the scope of the project will also change. A lot of projects today are built in an agile setting. Use your initial requirements gathering to probe for possible changes in the future and then align yourself with as many open doors as possible. Remember that a strong home always needs a strong foundation to rest upon; a weak foundation will result in your home crumbling to the ground.
This chapter focused on pouring the foundation of a home. In the next chapter, Chapter 2, Project Configuration, we will be building what can be considered the frame of the house that sits upon that foundation. The frame of that house will consist of building a project, virtual environment and database needed for development.