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One problem with this article is the absence of any reasoning process. How do you know there is such a thing as a death spiral? How do you know these symptoms

One problem with this article is the absence of any reasoning process. How do you know there is such a thing as a death spiral? How do you know these symptoms apply to the "death spiral" condition. How do you know your solutions actually alleviate the symptoms or abandon the condition?

bdehaaff 13y ago
Personal experience after being an early employee or founder of six software companies and knowing or speaking directly with folks in hundreds of others. Simple experience and pattern recognition. Not science.
VLM 13y ago
Whatever metric you use for "working" goes up, and whatever metric you use for "accomplishing" goes down. Perhaps if you fix the problem those trends will reverse. Doesn't need to be hyper game-able beancounter make peoples pay depend on fudging the numbers. IN fact that will create negative creativity. You get better results if you write down and graph the departmental ratios of currently open bugs vs lines of git commits and for god sakes don't let anyone know or the gameification is on...
- bdehaaff 13y ago
  Yes, I think you are saying that the focus needs to be on results. Not effort. I agree, but is that what you are highlighting with your comments?
seiji 13y ago
Death spiral: When you keep creating products with no demand in the real world [1]. You create things, release things, nobody uses it, but by then, you're working on the next version nobody wants either. Death spiral: Working on components of a larger project with no hope of ever integrating all pieces into a coherent final release. Everything gets incrementally improved in isolation, but nobody can figure out how to cut a product out of all the pieces. [1]: Plenty of demand exists in the delusional minds of executives, PMs, and clueless employees though. It just doesn't match the real world.
- bdehaaff 13y ago
  True. That's one of the ways that you end up in this engineering death spiral -- bad market / product fit and thrashing strategy.

bdehaaff 13y ago

Personal experience after being an early employee or founder of six software companies and knowing or speaking directly with folks in hundreds of others. Simple experience and pattern recognition. Not science.

VLM 13y ago

Whatever metric you use for "working" goes up, and whatever metric you use for "accomplishing" goes down. Perhaps if you fix the problem those trends will reverse. Doesn't need to be hyper game-able beancounter make peoples pay depend on fudging the numbers. IN fact that will create negative creativity. You get better results if you write down and graph the departmental ratios of currently open bugs vs lines of git commits and for god sakes don't let anyone know or the gameification is on...

bdehaaff 13y ago
Yes, I think you are saying that the focus needs to be on results. Not effort. I agree, but is that what you are highlighting with your comments?

seiji 13y ago

Death spiral: When you keep creating products with no demand in the real world [1]. You create things, release things, nobody uses it, but by then, you're working on the next version nobody wants either. Death spiral: Working on components of a larger project with no hope of ever integrating all pieces into a coherent final release. Everything gets incrementally improved in isolation, but nobody can figure out how to cut a product out of all the pieces. [1]: Plenty of demand exists in the delusional minds of executives, PMs, and clueless employees though. It just doesn't match the real world.

bdehaaff 13y ago
True. That's one of the ways that you end up in this engineering death spiral -- bad market / product fit and thrashing strategy.