There’s a saying that I’ve heard a lot when doing animation work, which is “We’ll fix it in post.”

It’s one of those things that people say when a problem pops up during production, but it’s too much trouble to fix in order to meet a deadline. So “we’ll fix it in post” means that the problem gets pushed down the line to post-production, where last-minute changes have to be forced or thrown together.

I’ve found this concept to be pretty common in software development as well. When design for a piece of software isn’t fully fleshed out from the start, you’re more likely to stumble into unexpected problems. And the easy thing is to always say “we’ll figure it out later.”

While this is sometimes necessary, I find it’s often a costly decision in the long run. Things that should be resolved get pushed along until there is no choice left in the matter. Sometimes the quicker, last-minute solution isn’t the best one. Sometimes it’s better to take the time and figure things out from the start.

When getting into a big project, it’s easy to feel like you want to skip ahead to the “fun” parts, or to put off the smaller details. Ultimately, however, it’s harder to succeed when you don’t first establish your goals and all of the finer details that will guide the rest of the process. As much as software developers (myself included) love to dive into coding, developing a blueprint (i.e. a thorough design document) is going to benefit you in the long run. Every step of the development process is important – even the ones that aren’t quite as interesting on the surface.