Technology reporter Paul Rubens takes a look at IT failures and why they happen, even in big companies, in his article Why IT failures are unlikely to go away. One comment really frustrated me in that post:
Making the software more reliable would undoubtedly be possible, but to do so the developers would have to invest so much more time and money that the price of the product would end up having to be unacceptably high.
Bah!
It is a matter of discipline. If the team knows how to do Acceptance Test Driven Development, and they have the discipline to practice that consistently then they cost will not be significantly higher. The problem arises when a product owner does not see the value of good quality today, and instead pushes that off forever until it is someone else’s problem, or it is too hard to fix without a rewrite.
Technical debt is a thing that can be managed. Companies big and small need to have the discipline to manage their technical debt, and to build quality in. Don’t leave it as an after thought.
Anyways, this post is actually about The Phoenix Project
The Phoenix Project is fun as it is a wonderful story that is infused with the theory and practice behind lean. And no doubt you’ll be able to relate to some of the situations that the team encounters.
Perhaps the folks in Rubens article should pick this up. Quality is fixed, we expect high quality, deliver it!
