Target Group: Admins, Devs, Architects
Complexity: Simple
Learning from my own very painful experience and having it confirmed by a few fellow architects and tech-leads: If I don’t clean today, it’s (almost) never gonna happen.
Situation: The cleaning sprint that never happens
6 months into my new project I look into my configuration and code and it’s a mess. PMD throws thousands of complaints, almost all fields lack help text, page layouts are a horrible mess, some Permission Sets are not assigned to anyone, and one functionality needs “View All”.
It’s time to clean up, but the next deadline is coming, the customer urgently waits for a new release. I try to squeeze in a “Clean-Up” sprint, but nobody wants to listen. So clean-up is postponed (again), maybe after the next release. We all know, the Clean-Up sprint will never happen.
Solution: Don’t litter
Don’t litter, it sounds obvious, but hard to follow in practice. The easiest way to avoid a dirty Org is to not litter in the first place. Obviously, I’m guilty here myself. Adding Help Text to a Field is not my favorite task while I’m adding the amazing new advanced search.
If I don’t do it today, it will either never happen or be an even more painful experience in the future.
Thing’s I try to avoid littering in the future:
1) Fields and Objects: Naming, Description and Help Text
2) Automation: Delete Flows if unused, Git has a backup
3) Code: Everything PMD complains about
4) Code: Delete unused code, again Git has a backup
5) Page-Layouts: Clean them today, not tomorrow
6) Permission Sets: Always keep them clean and sparkly
7) Test-Data: Always perfect test data !IMPORTANT
8) Documentation: If I don’t update today, it’s even more painful tomorrow
9) ….
What’s your “littering” you’d love to stop?
PS: Yes, I’ve to go and implement Help Text for many fields over the weekend 🙁