> This last 1% [is] what separates a product that might not eventually fail from one that will eventually fail.
Then proceeds to list a dozen different types of instrumentation, dashboards, and documentation.
I don't know about anyone else here but I've working on many, many successful software projects that have made their owners many millions of dollars with out-of-date or missing documentation, minimal instrumentation, and minimal or no dashboards to speak of. Most projects I've worked on have achieved at least some level of commercial success and the vast majority missed at least one of those major categories, usually several.
Yes you'll be in a much better place if you have it, but if your competitors and building features and iterating the product while you're building out instrumentation and dashboards, you're likely going to lose over time.
* churn
* turnover and nothing of theirs is documented, everything is tribal knowledge
* their former "star performers" are now trapped working exactly on this single project because they're the only one that knows how it works.
* customer loss because fixes take weeks since you don't even get the metrics to know that their systems are down and their customers have come to believe them to be unreliable.
> I don't know about anyone else here but I've working on many, many successful software projects that have made their owners many millions of dollars with out-of-date or missing documentation, minimal instrumentation, and minimal or no dashboards to speak of. Most projects I've worked on have achieved at least some level of commercial success and the vast majority missed at least one of those major categories, usually several.
Since we're being pedantic, plenty of software projects that have made their owners many millions of dollars have subsequently failed. Who uses WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3?
And no automation or performance dashboards would have made them “not eventually fail”. (Among other reasons - I like how this article just assumes your product is Saas)
Those competitors will be known for crap quality and eventually their product beasts will be unmaintainable and hard to extend. So, while you keep steadily improving and extending they will eventually fold under their own unsustainable mess. I've seen it many times and been on the other side of it often enough.
Considering automated testing as "technical debt" is why there is so much crap out there.
> This last 1% [is] what separates a product that might not eventually fail from one that will eventually fail.
Then proceeds to list a dozen different types of instrumentation, dashboards, and documentation.
I don't know about anyone else here but I've working on many, many successful software projects that have made their owners many millions of dollars with out-of-date or missing documentation, minimal instrumentation, and minimal or no dashboards to speak of. Most projects I've worked on have achieved at least some level of commercial success and the vast majority missed at least one of those major categories, usually several.
Yes you'll be in a much better place if you have it, but if your competitors and building features and iterating the product while you're building out instrumentation and dashboards, you're likely going to lose over time.