08 December 2021
Five Whys
You find out your team wants to deprecate a legacy codebase, but you don’t know why. So, you embrace your inner five-year-old and ask:
“Why?”
“To clear up tech debt.”
“Why?”
“To easily launch new features.”
“Why?”
“To attract new customers.”
“Why?”
“To earn more money.”
“Why?”
“The CEO wants to buy a new beach house and move the company to California.”
At this point, you discover you disagree with the premise. You like life on Silicon Farm—the rolling hills, open space, and general pleasantness of your neighbors—and decide it’s a great place to live. You don’t want your company to move to California.
The Five Whys help to unravel the yarn ball.