Pick 2

We've all heard that when it comes to quality, scope, and the time you can only optimize 2 of them at a time. And for any given, localized, immediate decision that might be true. But what if I told you that over the long term you're better off with all three?

Following up on yesterday's topic, another one of my issues with two week sprints is the emphasis it places on time and showing value quickly. If every decision is based on what's going to produce the most value in the current sprint then you end up pushing a bow wave of cruft ahead of you. Eventually the resistance from all that cruft brings your forward progress to approximately zero. That's the classic description of technical debt.

Or to use a car analogy, consider Harbor Freight tools vs Snap-on. Harbor Freight sells project tools. Buy them, use them for one project, two if you're lucky, then move on. Snap-on sells tools for life. If you've ever had the opportunity to A/B compare the two you know what I mean. If you need a specialized tool you can run down to Harbor Freight, pick up the tool, and be using it for less money long before you can get the Snap-on truck to stop by. The second time you need the tool it will probably still work, but the third time you'll need to go buy another one, wasting time and money. And if you need it regularly pretty soon you realize you would have been much better off, getting things done faster and with higher quality, if you had just spent the time and money to get the good tools the first time.

Software development is the same thing. There are times when you need to be fast or cost conscious. Back in the day when I was working on games we needed to have the game on the shelf the day after Thanksgiving. If we didn't we'd lose a large percentage of initial sales, and never make them back up, so making the trade-off made sense. If we didn't get the game out and get the revenue the company might have gone out of business. On the other hand, on Falcon 4.0 we missed the next product cycle because we were still digging ourselves out of the hole we dug. It was the right choice, but only because we literally couldn't afford to spend the money up front.

Over the long haul you're better off doing it right. You'll find it's cheaper, faster, and provides more customer value.