Go Faster Now!
Nancy mentioned that the team was behind in our one-on-one. She said, "What are you going to do about it?"
"Huh?"
"Well, they're behind by a week or two. What are you going to do to make up the time?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Nancy, the team is working as fast as they can. They are working only on this project. They are doing what they can. Some of them are working overtime already, which is not good because we still have six weeks left on this project."
"Well, why don't you cut out the unit tests and reviews? That would free some time, wouldn't it?"
I was stunned. "Nancy, you are joking, right? Without the unit tests, we would have no testing at all. Without the unit tests, we have no way to know if what we're doing is good or not. You want to release this product in six weeks, right?"
Nancy nodded.
"Then let my team work the way they need to."
"But what about the code reviews? Maybe they can forget them. That might save some time."
"Nancy, it's been a long time since you wrote code, right?"
Nancy nodded.
"Well, it's harder now than it was for you. Did you ever write code that worked the first time?"
"Yeah, a couple of times."
"So, you wrote code that worked the first time, maybe five times in your 10 years as a developer? Were you dealing with pointers? I thought you were writing in assembler."
"Yes, it was assembler. The pointers were not like the pointers in C."
"So, why do you think that eliminating the code reviews is going to help us finish faster? That's just ...