During standup, one engineer on my team reported finding and fixing a longstanding problem in one of our core modules. It might have added 10 minutes to his work. That felt good and the team celebrated. We had better code and a customer didn’t have to report it to us.

Strong engineers take responsibility for the code and want the better code for everyone. I will hire this engineer every single day.

What the 10-minute fix cost the release

The obvious cost of this code fix was the time it took to recognize the problem and type the code to solve it. The hidden cost of this 10-minute fix included work for the engineer, quality, product, and support. The product manager at the standup outlined the work as soon as they heard about the fix. The work meant new unit tests, updated integration tests, user and support material, story changes or additions, and stakeholder updates.

We signed up for this work without intending to.

We hit code complete on time, but the release ended up being late by a few days.

Count the cost and decide when to pay it

When you hear about a 10-minute change, decide whether you should pull it into scope now or position it in the backlog where it would naturally fit.

Make this decision at the standup. Write down every step that goes with it, and who is responsible for each one. It’s a two-minute investment that will help you validate whether the quick 10-minute fix is quick after all.