4 ms·
Agreed. "Business value" shouldn't be a justification for constant quick-and-dirty work; otherwise, the implication is that you don't see long term value in you
by Cyranix 14y ago
Agreed. "Business value" shouldn't be a justification for constant quick-and-dirty work; otherwise, the implication is that you don't see long term value in your business. If you always budget some portion of time for paying off technical debt or (hopefully) creating a more well-crafted solution in the first place, you can still keep your time-to-delivery reasonably short yet improve your ability to maintain pace.
- mgkimsal 14y agoI guess more to the point, 'business value' has to be measured - it's generally going to be measured in dollars. If doing XYZ with the business will earn $50,000 over 6 months, let's consider doing it. Now, we need to look at the cost. If the cost is a few days of work - say... $5k for a team of people, it's a no brainer. If, however, making the code do new things breaks old stuff, and ends up taking 4 weeks, the cost may be $20k now, as well as 3x the opportunity cost of the extra weeks, as well as potential lost good will or extra customer service required to deal with things that broke because we pushed out new functionality without any ability to comprehensively test. Suddenly that potential $50k at the hard cost of > $20k might not be so appealing, and is far less a sure thing. This is one of the reasons it's been hard for me to be an 'employee' for any length of time anywhere - the politics involved in trying to see a big picture, and convince other people you can, in fact, do this, is troubling in most organizations. However, as an outside consultant, you're treated differently. And to the extent that you still run in to obstinate politics... you get to move on instead of having to work in the same org for years on end.