Two cars without licence plates were parked in 2 different towns. Both cars were intact except for one of them which was left with a broken window.
Within a dozen minutes, a family came to the car with a broken window to remove its battery and radiator. After 24 hours, nothing of value was left in that car. Fast forward, random acts of destruction followed.
Meanwhile, in the other town, the fully intact car remained as it was left for a week; until the owner decided to break one of its windows. The car then quickly endured the same fate as the previous one.
This was an experiment conducted in 1969 by Philip Zimbardo, an American psychologist.
This is a phenomenon we are familiar with in software development: once we tolerate a bad design decision, poor code and such, the software tends to rot by time. This is similar to when thermodynamicists observe the steady entropy increase in the universe. Entropy is the amount of disorder in a given system.
The way we overcome this issue in software development is to address and fix the issue as soon as it is diagnosed.
The broken window theory remains valid not only when it comes to software development but practically in every aspect of our lives:
- An urban area where littering, graffiti and drug sale are not fought at the initial stage becomes a crime nest.
- If you start your morning leaking your focus, thoughts, emotions or energy to noise, you will just tread water for the rest of the day. You won’t sleep well either.
- Tolerating one imperfection in your craft will encourage you to introduce more defect, affecting its quality.
- Not facing disrespect -as if there is a virtue in being a rabbit- attracts more of it.
The only counter-example which invalidates the broken window theory is a relationship from a man’s perspective: if problems start to appear in your relationship don’t try to fix them. You won’t thrive on that. A woman is born to discover herself. A man is born to invent himself.