[fenomas]

> The thing with voluntary crunch is it becomes institutionalized and part of your company culture.

That's exactly what the author argues teams must avoid. His premise is explicitly that a little crunch isn't harmful as long as it's not an institutionalized part of the company culture.

[ZenoArrow]

A little crunch is harmful too, just less harmful.

Crunch is rarely a necessity. If the deadline can't be moved, and you're going to miss it, work on cutting the workload (drop features, etc...). If the project can't have any corners cut, then move the deadline. If neither of these is an option, then do what you have to do and find new managers for the next project, because they should've been more on the ball and planned for potential slippage by giving a time buffer to avoid crunch.

[fenomas]

I don't think the author would disagree. He's saying that if you avoid crunch 99% of the time then crunching for the last 1% isn't very bad and might even be good. He's not saying you can avoid 99% but the last 1% is inevitable.

[ZenoArrow]

> "the last 1% is inevitable"

I don't think it's inevitable at all. If you plan for slippage by not being too optimistic with time schedules then it can be avoided.

[fenomas]

> I don't think it's inevitable at all.

I said the author is not saying it's inevitable.