3 ms·

I think the OPs paradigm holds. If the Code Refactoring has a huge performance impact then it's Offensive work, if it has no impact, then it's defensive.

• brightball 7y ago
  IMO you just pointed out the key to selling the work. Reclassification.
  • tj-teej 7y ago
    Not exactly, because sometimes there's refactoring which has 0 customer benefit. Sometimes it doesn't improve the UX/latency/etc. Sometimes it just makes the codebase easier to maintain, the point of what the OP is saying is that this work is hard to justify. If you spend an entire year making a codebase "easier to maintain" but don't deliver anything tangible that is all defensive work and not offensive work and there's no reclassification which can solve that.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    It’s dirty accounting tricks for a greater good. I kinda resent the fact that we have to resort to this.
    • brlewis 7y ago
      A huge performance impact is a shiny thing that is easy to show outsiders and get them excited about. There is no dirty accounting here.
      • jolfdb 7y ago
        The dirty accounting is that doing work to prevent bugs gets no credit, but letting bugs happen and then fixing them gets credit.
        • wolf550e 7y ago
          Even worse, introducing shiny features in half-baked bug ridden way gets credit, the person who gets to fix all the bugs and possibly reimplement the whole thing correctly gets no credit.