[hinkley]

There was a podcast I listened to years ago that stuck with me. Every time it comes up I vow to find a link but never get around to it.

The guest proposed a model of software features and why “agile” fails for a lot of people. On a two dimensional graph of difficulty and profitability, everyone avoids the high effort, low value quadrant. That’s a no brainer.

Problem is a lot of policy ends up avoiding the high-effort column entirely.

Low-effort features are only short term differentiators, if even that. They offer no long term viability.

To have features your competitors don’t have is going to take real work.

The only loophole I know for this is if my code quality is good, what is a moderate effort feature for me may be a high effort feature for you. If my pockets are deep I can just run my competitor down, by setting an agenda they can’t afford.