I feel like we're talking about different things... Continuous refactoring IS focusing on quality, it IS managing complexity. I think you've seriously misunder

I feel like we're talking about different things... Continuous refactoring IS focusing on quality, it IS managing complexity. I think you've seriously misunderstood Deming if you think he stood for "Do it perfect from the start". The whole Kaizen philosophy is built on continuous improvement and elimination of waste (redundant code) I'm not saying do a week/month/year of crappy coding and then "fix it later". Refactor continuously and as often as needed. Writing code is research. The cost of refactoring is the greatest when you've done it too seldom. Otherwise with the right tools it's pretty efficient these days. I see larger dangers in doing up front architect astronauting and make decisions before you've internalized all the problems. For complex project it's of course appropriate to gather requirements, limitations etc and make a rough design, but going into too much detail is setting the cart before the horse... IMHO of course.