Web Operations

The Quality Defenders' Lament

One large source of waste in development is double-checking. For example, imagine a team operating in a traditional waterfall development system, without continuous deployment, TDD, or continuous integration. When a developer wants to check in code, or an ops staff member thinks he's ready to push a release, this is a very scary moment. He has a choice: do it now, or double-check to make sure everything still works and looks good. Both options are attractive. If he proceeds now, he can claim the rewards of being done sooner. On the other hand, if he causes a problem, his previous speed will be counted against him. Why didn't he spend just another five minutes making sure he didn't cause that problem? In practice, how people respond to this dilemma is determined by their incentives, which are driven by the culture of their team. How severely is failure punished? Who will ultimately bear the cost of their mistakes? How important are schedules? Does the team value finishing early?

But the thing to notice in this situation is that there is really no right answer. People who agonize over the choice reap the worst of both worlds. As a result, people will tend toward two extremes: those who believe in getting things done as fast as possible, and those who believe that work should be carefully checked. Any intermediate position is untenable over the long term. When things go wrong any nuanced explanation of the trade-offs involved is going to sound unsatisfying. ...