Fairly Realistic

“Your standards are too high. We need to get products out and for sale and do not have time to always do it the right way. Just do it the fast way even if it means cutting corners.” Someone said that to me in a product development meeting today.

Apparently, I test too much and I have too high of standards for the work I turn in. There are two methodologies to programming; Measure twice, cut once or talk about measuring, cut as much as you have to until you need to start all over again because your piece of wood is gone.

I see the importance in getting projects done quickly and having a product to sell. Payroll needs to be paid one way or another. I do not see the logic in pushing products out the door so quickly that they end up being a nightmare to maintain or make changes to in the future. It has to be hard to run a business and juggle all of these things but at some level it should always be quality over quantity.

One time I got the list out; you can have two of the following things: quality, low-cost, quick development. I tried to explain that you can only have two items from that list without much luck. The general rule is to sacrifice quality for low-cost and fast development. Of course, this always comes back to bite later because of maintenance costs or when adding features. Heaven forbid that a product have changes in a later version.