3 ms·

I hope you didn't jump straight to quitting. There may have been a legitimate need to launch something that quickly. When I get requests like that, I usually ex

I hope you didn't jump straight to quitting. There may have been a legitimate need to launch something that quickly. When I get requests like that, I usually explain the immutable rule of software development... deadline, quality, scope: pick two. Since he wants to adjust the deadline, ask him which of the other two he'll compromise. One answer, quality, would probably lead me to quit, since I can't stand delivering stuff that sucks, but if he were willing to adjust scope of those projects, it's a completely reasonable request.

flukus 9y ago
IME sacrificing quality almost always pushes out a deadline and costs, sometimes for decades. Low quality means constant firefighting will interrupt everything else.
justherefortart 9y ago
The company was a hard sell for me to even take the job in the first place. The owner is a piece of shit human being. Once I saw the inside, it's likely even illegal what they're doing. So no, I didn't jump. I had to be persuaded to take the job in the first place. Life is too short for bullshit. I delivered what I said I would, and when they didn't live up to their end of the bargain, they faced the consequences I told them they would when I was hired.
beat 9y ago
As a slightly pedantic aside, I prefer Kent Beck's observation that the triangle is time, scope, resources, with quality independent of those three. Of course, quality can be sacrificed in the short term to improve time or scope, but the impact is so gruesomely negative to their long-term prospects that it should simply never be done. Resources as a leg also lines up with the observation from The Mythical Man-Month that adding resources to a late project makes it later. (I have experienced this directly.) So resources are rarely mutable to a significant degree; you have the team you have and the budget you have - and you really do not want to see what happens when you suddenly get an unlimited budget! So I tend to phrase it as every project is either scope-bound or schedule-bound. One of those can flex - which one? If you can't flex either, you will probably fail.

flukus 9y ago

IME sacrificing quality almost always pushes out a deadline and costs, sometimes for decades. Low quality means constant firefighting will interrupt everything else.

justherefortart 9y ago

The company was a hard sell for me to even take the job in the first place. The owner is a piece of shit human being. Once I saw the inside, it's likely even illegal what they're doing. So no, I didn't jump. I had to be persuaded to take the job in the first place. Life is too short for bullshit. I delivered what I said I would, and when they didn't live up to their end of the bargain, they faced the consequences I told them they would when I was hired.

beat 9y ago

As a slightly pedantic aside, I prefer Kent Beck's observation that the triangle is time, scope, resources, with quality independent of those three. Of course, quality can be sacrificed in the short term to improve time or scope, but the impact is so gruesomely negative to their long-term prospects that it should simply never be done. Resources as a leg also lines up with the observation from The Mythical Man-Month that adding resources to a late project makes it later. (I have experienced this directly.) So resources are rarely mutable to a significant degree; you have the team you have and the budget you have - and you really do not want to see what happens when you suddenly get an unlimited budget! So I tend to phrase it as every project is either scope-bound or schedule-bound. One of those can flex - which one? If you can't flex either, you will probably fail.