Do the simplest thing that could possibly work. Work in pairs.
Make testing an integral part of your work. That all sounds like
Extreme Programming, right? True–but it’s part of Extreme System
Administration too! Andrew Cowie’s “Extreme System Administration”
examines some lessons of XP and agile development and argues that
they apply equally well to system administration:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/31/extreme_admin.html