Comment by thrance
8 hours ago
By "The one that provides most value", do you mean in the short or long term? Very often, in my experience, prioritizing so-called "quick wins" only quickly wins the codebase more tech debt, that puts the project on a sure path to development hell.
> do you mean in the short or long term?
The answer to that is sadly "yes".
> prioritizing so-called "quick wins" only quickly wins the codebase more tech debt, that puts the project on a sure path to development hell.
That's why we pay senior developers lots of money. Their gut feeling (or past scars) about what actually gives value across different horizons.
Very few of them have worked on a single system for more than four or five years, and have no idea what their decisions cost after they left. Many have joined a project after four or five years and suffered from those decisions, but they don't actually know why the decisions were made - how things looked at the time those decisions were made - and so they can make the same mistakes in their next greenfield project.
Of course, some systems have to ship at all costs or there won't be a second or third year, so judgement is still required.
But a lot of experienced people still underweight the costs of having lots of "low impact" defects.