“It’s a Demo”: Quality versus Quantity
Posted on November 2, 2009 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Productivity
Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.
Recently at work we were told to create a demo system of a new application using a new programming product. We needed to have it up quickly, so that it could be shown to customers as a preview of the application to come. With no documentation for the programming framework, we scraped things together, mostly copying and pasting and hoping things worked. But it was OK. It was “just a demo” and everyone knew it. My questions of “they know this isn’t release-quality code, right?” went unheeded. “It’s just a demo.”
I now live in dread of when I am going to be told that the “demo” product is going live without any of the rework necessary. It’s not an “if” — it’s a “when”. I have seen this happen many times before, at many different places.
This issue here is that it takes time to plan to produce quality. When that time is cut short, what appears to work might just be smoke and mirrors.
“How does this apply to productivity?” you’re probably asking yourself.
It applies to any area of life. If we don’t take the time to plan what we are doing and need to accomplish, we may do a lot of work quickly, but this work may not hold up to future scrutiny.
Think about it.
Photo by tj scenes
If you enjoyed this post, please buy me a cup of coffee!
