Don’t Cross the Beams: Avoiding Interference Between Horizontal and Vertical Refactorings | Three Rivers Institute

Three Rivers Institute » Blog Archive » Don’t Cross the Beams: Avoiding Interference Between Horizontal and Vertical Refactorings

Inexperienced responsive designers can get in a state where they try to move quickly on refactorings that are unlikely to work out, get burned, then move slowly and cautiously on refactorings that are sure to pay off. Sometimes they will make real progress, but go try a risky refactoring before reaching a stable-but-incomplete state. Thinking of refactorings as horizontal and vertical is a heuristic for turning this situation around–eliminating risk quickly and exploiting proven opportunities efficiently.