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"41. There's never enough time to do it right, but somehow, there's always enough time to do it over." There are quite a lot of items on this list that applies
by makach 6y ago
"41. There's never enough time to do it right, but somehow, there's always enough time to do it over."
There are quite a lot of items on this list that applies to any kind of project management, software development.
This is too close to home, will enjoy responsibly.
- okl 6y agoIn my experience, the opposite is often the case -- The argument: "We can't start over because we don't have enough time left" grows in strength as the project approaches the deadline and is used to justify shoddy work. (You paint yourself into a corner.) I guess one aspect why "agile" stuff is effective, is that the "last day" (on which it becomes surprisingly easy to make all the decisions that couldn't be made until now) happens multiple times and earlier in the project.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Ottolay 6y agoTo me this is more of a NASA thing. If a program ends up going over budget too much it gets cancelled. But the need is still there, so new program is often started up with a similar set of requirements. This problem is endemic across government aerospace programs.
- valuearb 6y agoNASA projects don’t get canceled for being over budget or late, they get canceled for being championed by a different administration. Sources: - SLS - Orion - James Webb Telescope - constellation/Ares V project
- consumer451 6y agoOne of the more egregious examples in my mind was Nixon just walking away from Apollo hardware. What a tragic waste.
- lambda_obrien 6y agoIt took 24 months of effort to get a particular system to barely run every hour by some contractors. After 3 weeks, I rewrote most of it and still have a month left, but it runs in 5 seconds. I'm having trouble right now convincing my boss it's better to work on the 5 second version even if he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the 1 hour version. It's the most annoying sunk cost ever.
- karaterobot 6y agoI took him as being sarcastic when saying there was always time to do it over. He's ironically stating the bad logic that people use to justify introducing new technical debt. At least, that's what I assume, since I've heard this sentiment expressed in the much clearer phrasing "If you haven't got the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over?". That's apparently the title of a popular book by a management consultant named John Wooden, but I'm not sure of the provenance of the quote.
- larrydag 6y agoFrom Elon Musk "failure is an option". My take, if you aren't failing then you aren't learning.
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoDepends what kind of payload you have on your rocket. People or a billion-plus dollars of equipment? Or is it just a test rocket to see if it can land itself?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> People or a billion-plus dollars of equipment? Requiring no risk of failure for people is a large part of why we don’t launch astronauts much. Space is risky. Setting the expectation that astronauts can never be lost, as opposed to that they are on an exciting frontier that has its dangers, is out of line with astronauts’ own risk preferences. This has been a failure of expectations setting by NASA.
- scrollaway 6y agoI'm sure it's not just for the sake of the astronauts though. Losing an astronaut is losing a massive investment and years of training.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> Losing an astronaut is losing a massive investment and years of training Practically grounding astronauts for three decades is not much better.
- irowe 6y agoWhich 3 decades were astronauts practically grounded?
- 6y ago