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by friendlydog 1602 days ago
Then the "geek elite" would spend more time fixing things they should have learned before starting. Devs who have fixed general office worker's abominations of Microsoft Access and turned them into proper apps would agree. This isn't to belittle the creations, just an observation. The work the normal office workers build had value to the business or their managers wouldn't have let them build it. The issue comes in risk to the business when best practices are unknown and not followed. When the Access app collapses under its own weight is often when "geek elite" are summoned to pull the team's mission critical homegrown application out of the fire, and the expectations are often not matched when they build something the wrong way it takes a few days and it might take a few sprints to "do it right." The solution is probably to meet in the middle and take the apps made by the regular office workers and migrate the ones with value as soon as possible. Accruing technical debt is cheaper and it can be unpaid until disaster strikes so that is often the choice of management especially if the environment or relationship between front line office workers and internal app developers is strained.