Accept that quality matters more than velocity. Ship slower, ship working. The cost of fixing production disasters dwarfs the cost of proper development.
This has been a struggle my entire career. Sometimes, the company listens. Sometimes they don’t. It’s a worthwhile fight but it is a systemic problem caused by management and short-term profit-seeking over healthy business growth
“Apparently there’s never the money to do it right, but somehow there’s always the money to do it twice.”
Management never likes to have this brought to their attention, especially in a Told You So tone of voice. One thinks if this bothered pointy-haired types so much, maybe they could learn from their mistakes once in a while.
Post-mortems always seemed like a waste of time to me, because nobody ever went back and read that particular confluence page (especially me executives who made the same mistake again)
The sad thing is that velocity pays the bills. Quality it seems, doesn’t matter a shit, and when it does, you can just patch up the bits people noticed.
I don’t make games, but fine. Baldurs Gate 3 (PS5 co-op) and Skyrim (Xbox 360) had more crashes than any games I’ve ever played.
Did that stop either of them being highly rated top selling games? No. Did it stop me enjoying them? No.
Quality feels important, but past a certain point, it really isn’t. Luck, knowing the market, maneuverability. This will get you most of the way there. Look at Fortnite. It was a wonky building game they quickly cobbled into a PUBG clone.
This has been a struggle my entire career. Sometimes, the company listens. Sometimes they don’t. It’s a worthwhile fight but it is a systemic problem caused by management and short-term profit-seeking over healthy business growth
“Apparently there’s never the money to do it right, but somehow there’s always the money to do it twice.”
Management never likes to have this brought to their attention, especially in a Told You So tone of voice. One thinks if this bothered pointy-haired types so much, maybe they could learn from their mistakes once in a while.
Twice? Shiiiii
Amateur numbers, lol
We’ll just set up another retrospective meeting and have a lessons learned.
Then we won’t change anything based off the findings of the retro and lessons learned.
Post-mortems always seemed like a waste of time to me, because nobody ever went back and read that particular confluence page (especially me executives who made the same mistake again)
Post mortems are for, “Remember when we saw something similar before? What happened and how did we handle it?”
The sad thing is that velocity pays the bills. Quality it seems, doesn’t matter a shit, and when it does, you can just patch up the bits people noticed.
This is survivorship bias. There’s probably uncountable shitty software that never got adopted. Hell, the E.T. video game was famous for it.
I don’t make games, but fine. Baldurs Gate 3 (PS5 co-op) and Skyrim (Xbox 360) had more crashes than any games I’ve ever played.
Did that stop either of them being highly rated top selling games? No. Did it stop me enjoying them? No.
Quality feels important, but past a certain point, it really isn’t. Luck, knowing the market, maneuverability. This will get you most of the way there. Look at Fortnite. It was a wonky building game they quickly cobbled into a PUBG clone.
That applies in so many industries 😅 like you want it done right… Or do you want it done now? Now will cost you 10x long term though…
Welp now it is I guess.
You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it good (high quality), but you can only pick two.
Getting 2 is generous sometimes.
There’s levels to it. True quality isn’t worth it, absolute garbage costs a lot though. Some level that mostly works is the sweet spot.