While I'm on the topic
Another conversation I had at work recently involved rushing code out the door. We've done much too much of it. But we're facing two goals: get it done now, and get it done right. If you delay it long enough to do sufficient testing, you know you'll catch shit for not having it done fast. If you rush it out the door, you might catch shit at some future time for it being wrong.
Eventually, you have to learn that once you've rushed it out the door, the customer can dissect it at their leisure. And when they do eventually find that bug -- and they will -- it won't help to tell them they didn't give you enough time. They'll ask why you didn't tell them you needed more time.
I've tried asking, "Do you want it now, or do you want it right?" That doesn't seem to help either. Oh, and the reason we keep rushing reports out the door? Our customer has a reporting department that is larger than our entire IT department. They have all the same data we do. But they say that it will take at least four weeks from the initial request to produce a finished report. So when they want a report for a meeting that starts in two hours, they call us and tell us to shit some numbers, fast, and they'd better be right.
