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by rajangdavis
2887 days ago
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Totally understand that a project can't be perfect, and I could be wrong, but I feel that if there are a lot of bugs, the project scope is too big and/or the requirements are not well understood. There is also the matter of really picky customers; however, if a customer can articulate what you are doing wrong, I don't think that it's a bad thing if they are picky. Quality should be in step with expectations; selling services that can't be achieved with in a specific time slot is worse than trying to fix all of the bugs. |
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Indeed. And I'm under the impression that the project's take on fixing issues (not just bugs!) is a central part of that, which goes against OP's argument somewhat:
Scope/requirements are usually not out of whack because nobody thought about it when the project started (that's a whole other world of bad project management). The fact is that we're not good at all at judging how the scope and the requirements will change in the future. When (not if!) that eventually happens, you cannot just go adding random changes and edge cases forever, or you'll end up with a horrible Rube Goldberg machine no one has ever even a chance of understanding. You'll have to consistently monitor the sanity and accuracy of your model and either choose to limit the scope of the thing you're building or to correct the model for those edge cases you haven't considered, lest you monkeypatch yourself into a corner.
Now, those bugs that cost so much to fix are usually those where your model breaks down. And that, in turn, is where it's necessary to regurarly step back, find out which part of the model doesn't fit reality anymore and how you can fix it. Then, you can make one of the two decisions above. I've seen my fair share of code in projects where that wasn't done properly, and sometimes, only ignorance on the management side can explain the lack of panic regarding that code.
> Quality should be in step with expectations; selling services that can't be achieved with in a specific time slot is worse than trying to fix all of the bugs.
Well said.