[holmberd]

Easy to say, but unfortunately rarely seen in the wild, depending on the experience of the project manager. Once that product is live and climbing, no owner wants to hear talks about slowing down for reasons of better test coverage or refactoring.

[usefulcat]

I think the point is more that the slowing down is going to happen anyway if production systems are repeatedly catching on fire and people are afraid to make changes. At that point the difference is how having or not having tests will affect things in the longer term.

[holmberd]

Indeed, but prototypes running in production or running without tests, is a symptom of other underlying problems in the organization. I feel that scope creep and lack of testing goes hand in hand for projects that are poorly managed.