Comment by EliRivers
1 year ago
a project is shipped when the important people at your company believe it is shipped
Definitely. This can work very much to your favour.
There have been times when I have happily shipped a product containing issues and bugs that would be catastrophic for any customer using it, because I know that no customer actually ever will. The product is shipped and released, everyone is happy.
The catastrophic issues won't ever come up because that shipped product will never be used by anyone.
Big people are happy because the product is shipped.
Team are happy because big people have stopped causing so much friction in their desire to ship.
When the measurement becomes "have we slapped the label shipped on it", then that's what you get. A label.
It will become the headache of future team members that have to debug it when it inevitably crashes four years in the future, or needs to be rebuilt or the deployment moved.
Now personally I am fine with this, being that person. I will cause friction however. Unfortunately it is the new big people that take the hit from the previous big people. But such is the way of the world, this is what we are paid for.
Sometimes you get lucky and can shut things down. Then you get to celebrate that as well, shutting down the thing nobody ever used but everyone celebrated “shipping”. At least I get my celebratory cake!