Have you ever had that sinking feeling after embarking on what seemed like “an easy change” that it is slowly spiraling out of your control ? What about the feeling of despair when critical technical debt is yet again ignored because it’s sheer size and complexity make it too daunting to know where to start?
I used to have these feelings a number of years ago until I discovered The Mikado Method, a technique formalized by Ola Ellnestam and Daniel Brolund in 2014.
I’ll give an explanation of the main steps of the method and share with you how I started using the method to make sure my refactorings were not soul destroying trials of fire, and eventually how we started using them in teams to tackle big refactorings that were going to require multiple sprints to achieve.