Some productivity killers: - Distractions - Feature creep - Poor code organization: coupling, action at a distance, cyclomatic complexity - Noise: comments

Some productivity killers: - Distractions - Feature creep - Poor code organization: coupling, action at a distance, cyclomatic complexity - Noise: comments that do not get to the point. A tool to mitigate this is https://foxtype.com https://foxtype.com - Hacks and lack of consistency - Lack of automation: tests, builds, deployments Regarding hacks, imagine what would physics equations would look like if a fundamental constant was wrong. All equations would need to compensate for it by including some arbitrary constant making everything more complicated. That is what messy code bases look like, layers of lies to compensate for lies. Clean code is more straightforward, easier to work with. Regarding iterations... does the army run an exercise with soldiers and trucks and live ammo each time a general wants to test an idea? No. They use simulations, and only the ones that look promising are turned into exercises. So rather than asking engineers to prototype some throwaway idea, get your hands dirty and use Powerpoint and your imagination, stress the idea, then build it. And if it's built, keep it in a feature branch until you've actually decided to keep it for good. When a car is built, engineers tell designers to modify their concepts in order to make the production more cost efficient. Same in software... be prepared to negotiate requirements if that is in the best interest of the project.