Beautiful Teams

Chapter 27. Speed Versus Quality: Why Do We Need to Choose?

Johanna Rothman

DURING A PROJECT WHEN I WAS THE PROJECT MANAGER, I HAD THIS CONVERSATION WITH A SENIOR manager at a company:

Big Cheese: "Stop those code reviews. They're slowing down the project."

Johanna: "But then we won't know where the bugs are. We need the code reviews."

Big Cheese: "Stop them or I'll fire you."

Johanna: "You'll fire me for doing the right thing?"

Big Cheese: "In this case, the right thing is to finish the project as fast as possible. Stop those code reviews."

Pretty strange conversation, eh?

I wish I could say this was an isolated incident. But even though this particular conversation occurred almost 20 years ago, it still happens every day someplace. This is the story of a team that refused to buckle under management pressure to do it fast. The team knew that they if they did a great job, they could do it fast, by doing it right.

How Did We Get Here?

If we turn on the Way-Back machine to the beginning of the project, Big Cheese brought the project team together and said, "I have great news. I sold a new version of ProcessControlApp. But it has to do these three things faster, and have these five new features. And, we need it in six months."

The project team of six developers got together and discussed the problem. They'd worked as a team for several years. The newest team member had 18 months of experience working on the product with the team, and the most senior developer had initiated the product four ...