Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

My Dad, Broken Windows Theory and Software Development II

Dave Murphy has brought up a delicate, excruciatingly painful yet important point.  Time to market, executives' business commitments, customer pressure also play a major role in the scheduling of projects.  As they should, but never at the cost of deteriorating products and low quality.

Originally, I wanted to write the following in the comment section.  But then I realized that it was getting too long.  I decided to use an entry to answer.

Dave, my entry was directed at those executives as well.  Compromising on quality does not pay.  Let me tell you a short story, which actually describes the absolute worst year in my entire life (so far that is).  To be absolutely clear: this did not take place at Sun, this story is from my ancient history.  My manager committed that my team will deliver a project in what seems in retrospect an absolutely impossible schedule.  As you say, I warned, yelled, screamed, cried - but all was falling on deaf ears.  I remember clearly, the day the project's release was announced.  We were shocked, knowing that it was nowhere near being ready to ship.  Features were incomplete, quality was not even low - it was non existent, even the hardware still had some issues.  A few executives, of the kind you're talking about, with their reputations (and actually jobs) on the line, launched the "mandatory 80 hour work week" program, no vacations were allowed.  In fact, I remember clearly - people had to submit for vacation, if they wanted one of the weekend days off!  Builds were spun almost daily, and sometimes twice daily, dozens of testers were hired only to keep finding the bugs already found by the other testers.  Management meetings were concluding sometimes after midnight.  Intimidation was everywhere.

Bottom line - the project was late - by about a year, it was over-budget by who-know-how-many millions of dollars, reputations were tarnished, people were having heart-attacks, and a few divorces were recorded.  It was a disaster.  Disaster for the business as well as for individuals.  All the executives involved were either fired or extracted.  Scores of good people left the company.

This reminds me of a children's tale.  A farmer once had a special duck.  That duck would lay one golden egg every day.  The farmer became rich, and greedy at the same time.  He decided to kill the duck and get all the eggs at one time.  He slaughtered the duck, only to find an empty stomach.  The moral of the story is simple: if you ask for too much - you get absolutely nothing.  Projects, and schedules, must be challenging, but realistic.  Some people forget the realistic part.

The good news is that I have seen other executives as well.  The kind who fight tooth and nail to delay releases for the sake of quality.  The kind who would worry about the well being of their staff, the kind who will actually succeed in delivery of solid products, who make their customers delighted.  My point stands: quality is not negotiable!

Posted at 08:03AM May 30, 2007 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]