The Business and the Programmers want the same thing. They want the same thing: to deliver a more predictable stream of important features that will make the market happy--or, at least, knowing the fickle market, that will risk disappointing them the least.

This. Is. Glorious.

The Business and the Programmers needs to agree on two things, each conceding a key point to the other. The Business needs to agree that the Programmers have heretofore gone more quickly than they really can, that they cannot sustain this pace, and that to do so merely hastens the ultimate decline of the entire product line, and perhaps the company. The Programmers need to agree that the Business has a legitimate need to deliver more features, that everyone’s livelihood depends on this, and that trying to ask for more than the Programmers can deliver forms part of the Business’s “job”, as it were. The market compels them to do this. In this equation, the Programmers have the responsibility to do whatever they can to maximise their ongoing delivery speed, and that includes regular, agreessive refactoring.

Finally, both the Business and the Programmers have to agree that they have wasted too much time arguing about this and need to move forward. They want the same thing! They can have it!

via The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers - The Code Whisperer.

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