Retrospection, orientation, and I'll re-phrase the last one as "maybe stop digging that hole before it's so deep you can't climb out." (I'm guessing on that las

Retrospection, orientation, and I'll re-phrase the last one as "maybe stop digging that hole before it's so deep you can't climb out." (I'm guessing on that last one, not heard drainage used that way either.) Retrospection: Periodically examine what you've made and how, identifying the good, the bad, and the ugly. Try to structure your future work to produce more of the good and less of the bad and ugly. Orientation: Periodically check to see if you're making what you meant to make, is what the customer wanted you to make, and is still what the customer wants you to make. "Stop digging": Ok, you have a bit of code that's almost right, but it fails some tests. Add an extra conditional here, copy/paste a function there, change a constant in the copied code, voila problem solved. Oh, failing another test, let's repeat, and repeat. In the end you have 10x (or more) the necessary code and anyone looking at it would, rightfully, mock you for copying a 10 line function multiple times to make "render_with_black_background", "render_with_blue_background", "render_with_green_background", etc. when you, maybe, could have made it a parameter (with a default value) instead. It's related to the previous two in the sense that if you're actually retrospecting and periodically orienting, you probably won't dig the hole too deep.