Architect or gardener

George R.R. Martin once discussed the idea that writers can be categorized as either architects or gardeners:

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.”

George R.R. Martin

He’s also mentioned that no one is purely an architect or a gardener but rather a mix of the two.

I like to think that this idea can apply to creative fields other than writing, such as software development.

How much planning do you do before trying things out?

There is significant value in getting started and seeing what happens, then taking a step back to plan based on experience rather than assuming you can plan everything from the beginning. This is why agile development is so common nowadays, as opposed to the traditional waterfall approach. Requirements often change as a project develops because our perspective shifts once we have something tangible to interact with. There is only so much we can foresee in our minds beforehand; we must be reactive for the rest.

Related post: Planning vs doing