In December last year, our team had to meet a challenging business goal, and to meet it we changed quite a lot of our process. As the end of the year came close, we felt the desire to have some kind of reflection. We didn't feel the need for a fully fledged retrospective, though - instead, we wanted something lightweight and fun - and preferably something appreciative. I decided to try a variation of the Like To Like exercise as the main part. Here is how it went.

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"You ain't gonna need it!" (short YAGNI) is one of the most popular, and probably also most misunderstood and misused mantras of Extreme Programming. Again and again I see it used as an excuse to not improve a design "because it already works".

I guess the following has already been stated in hundreds of places on the web and elsewhere, in some form or another - on the other hand I also think it can't be said too often:

YAGNI applies to functionality, not design. All Agile approaches I know of are quite adamant about the fact that you need a clean, well decoupled, cohesive, duplication-free, expressive and extensively tested design from the beginning. One that is optimized for the currently implemented (and needed) functionality.