Assessment is a daily concern

How often should we assess our systems?

This is a typical question that both managers and developers ask when I present humane assessment. This is a great question because it talks about costs. My answer:

Every day.

Not every week. Not every second day. Every single day.

Whether acknowledged or not, developers spend a significant amount of time on understanding their system every single day. Actually we would not want them doing otherwise. The only problem is that they do it implicitly using the least productive solution: manual code reading.

We have to do better than that. Assessment is not a nice-to-have skill. It is a central one.