Don't Forget the R!

In many companies, the development team is referred to as the R&D team, Research and Development.  Sometimes as a developer I feel bad when I end up either starting, or debugging, a project and get caught up in "Research" mode.

Here's the key, don't feel bad.  If you're a trained, skilled developer then you're likely researching faster about your chosen field than someone else could, so you're still doing your job, and still "earning your keep" even though the research time doesn't usually bear visible results.

So don't mess around, but if don't undervalue the importance of Research in trying to solve a problem or create a solution where there wasn't one before...