Learning When To Stop Developing A Project
Robert Moses used lies and trickery to ensure that his projects were completed. He loved to start projects and let pride, politics, and sunk costs pull them to completion. Software development is notorious for grinding on and delivering projects years late that don’t solve the original problem.
SaaS project deadlines are artificial, usually the only thing that can stop a project is completion. Even projects with no developers will shamble on, zombie-like, eating a bit of everyone’s brain as they stumble through the code.
Calendars are cyclical; it’s technically never too late or too early to get ready for your industry’s high volume period. But if you see a project to scale for Black Friday, in January, there’s a good chance that you don’t need to finish it.
I have been involved with many “if we switch from technology X to Y, we can save a lot of money” type projects. Less than half produced significant cost savings. In most of the cases we knew that the savings wouldn’t materialize early in the project. The projects kept going anyway.
