I’ve had some success with non technical people and a warehouse metaphor. Can you keep shipping products if you never tidy up? Yes it’s possible but eventually

I’ve had some success with non technical people and a warehouse metaphor. Can you keep shipping products if you never tidy up? Yes it’s possible but eventually it catches up to you. There’s no specific point in time at which tidying up a warehouse is going to make or break a business but the untidy ones are more likely to be hard to hire for and more likely to catch fire. And they’ll definitely slow down ability to ship products. Warehouses that stay tidy have a predictable rate of shipping and reduced risks of accidents and fires. Do you need to put that one single item in the right place every time to continue to ship anything? Well the answer is always no, but permanent short term thinking like that without ever tidying will always eventually cost you in the end. Much easier to keep on top of it. Workers and new hires are also more effective. I find that this metaphor doesn’t feel forced or stretched and it’s pretty intuitive and nicely harmonises with products and shipping terms that people use for software anyway.