The problem with time and competition
A competitive market forces all of us to cut corners in order to try and stay ahead of the pack. If you don't, you'll fall behind and is replaced faster than a neutrino can travel through your body. This applies to most professions alike. In the software development industry, there is an endless tug of war between timelines, features and budget. For the non technically minded readers, here is a short explanation of each.
- Timelines - It takes a finite amount of time to engineer a software based system. Companies want to be competitive, so the shorter time it takes to build something, the faster you get it to market and the bigger your advantage.
- Features - the more features a software system has, usually the better the company can promote it as being superior to the competition. More features equals more sales.
- Budget - naturally each software project is budget limited in some form or another. The cost to build software directly translates to the amount of profit that can be had.
Unfortunately these three aspects are mutually perpendicular to each other, kind of like a cartesian axis in 3D space. To improve on any one of them, you need to sacrifice one of the others. It is not possible to improve on all three alike at the same time. Since companies want all three improved all the time, this causes a huge predicament. Think about it - if the request comes down from management to get the release out of the door faster, i.e. reducing timelines, the only two ways you can possibly do this is to either reduce the features (i.e. reduce the work input), or to increase the budget (by adding more resources). Likewise for the other aspects.
My New Planted Tank
Just received my Discus a week ago. I really like the setup - even though it is a total jungle.
Chinese Are Direct
If this was North America, they would have been sued by now. But I guess in China they like to be direct. I like it.
