Hard Rules: Bending And Breaking Guide

Modern life consists of multiple processes and flows, and each of them has various rules and best practices. These rules were written by people who counted on standard scenarios and typical users. However, that is often not the case, so people try to bend or break these rules to get what they want. The following article explains how to do it properly and how not to write more of such rules.

Bending And Breaking Rules

The first thing you need to understand before trying to bend or break the rule is its primary purpose. A person who wrote that rule had some idea or a use case in mind. This person could write the rule to solve a problem, avoid a critical or dangerous situation, prepare a background for further actions, follow existing processes, etc.

When the primary purpose is clear, the next step is to define new expectations of this rule. It may be an additional trait, a new scenario, an additional feature, support of new workflow, and so on. If this new purpose is partially compatible with the original rule, you may bend the rule; otherwise, you must break it.

Bending the rule is usually easier. You should adjust the rule to maintain the original purpose and at the same time give the new trait. Sometimes it may be easy; in the other case you will need to partially change the definition to adjust it to the new trait.

Breaking the rule makes sense only if the original rule and its purpose are irrelevant. If you are breaking the rule, you have to rewrite it from scratch. You have to make sure that the new rule fully covers the original purpose and implements the new trait.

How To Create Flexible Rules

Ask yourself — why people may want to break or bend the rules? Because they are either inconvenient or irrelevant. How can you not create such rules? This question is significantly harder to answer.

Let us start with inconvenient rules. These rules are usually not appropriately defined or do not take into account future use cases. In other words, they are not flexible enough. In most cases, you should extend or modify your rules to provide the necessary level of flexibility. If there will be a new use case or scenario not covered directly, there will be a convenient way to use your rule for it.

Sometimes rules have to be hard, though, mostly if they cover life and death situations, security, essential financial operations, and so on. In other words, there are cases where flexibility is undesirable or even prohibited. There is no other way to get around them except for breaking. The first best practice here is to cover all use cases that presumably may appear in the future. The second one — revise these rules regularly to adapt them to new scenarios.

Here are common recommendations on how to deal with inflexible rules and how to prevent them from appearing. Use this knowledge well, and you may simplify your own life and the lives of other people.