[jonathanlydall]

While applying practices like treating warnings as errors on a CI server is something that every development team probably should be doing, it’s more a symptom of a generally weak development team than the thing that was holding the team back.

If a company policy mandated that it must be on, it would probably not meaningfully reduce poor code because the team was so poor in the first place, they probably don’t understand the problem it solves, so will just work around the now “error” using the least amount of effort to appease the CI server, while still leaving problems in their wake.

Strong teams regularly and consistently reflect on their processes towards continuously improving, such teams will naturally move to applying such a practice as it will add value.

Weak teams tend to just do what they always did until forced to do something new and even then they do it more cargo cult style than in a way that actually improves the bottom line.