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The most important product decision is what you don't build

161 points · 54 comments · ChrisArchitect

  1. alentred · · focus · HN ↗
    I have visited quite a bit of small towns that were actively built I suppose in the 60-s, and often see abandoned ambitious or even grandiose projects like a park here, or a community center there - fully built but totally deserted now, often in ruins.

    Every time I see those I also see the lesson - count your maintenance costs. It is a nice artificial water channel, yes, but will the city have the money to run it, clean it, supply water, etc.?

    Of course I know that the original (real estate) developers did the cost analysis, but when you see those abandoned places - very much objectively you can conclude that they made an error. A miscalculation, or an error in judgement.

    --

    Back to software I think scope creep causes many problems: the team loses focus, can be demotivated by delivering the features no one needs, etc. - all real and serious problems. But ultimately it is the ever growing maintenance cost that has a real ability to annihilate all team capacity.

    Everything we build, however high-quality it is, needs to be maintained and all projects should include this into their "run" phase budget. And growing maintenance costs only aggravate other scope creep issues.

    --

    And that's the tragedy of being the engineer/engineering manager/CTO even. Exactly like the post says, you don't get "promoted" for stuff you reject to do. I had countless occasions of successfully convincing product teams and boards to abandon or rescope the project, and although I am convinced it did good for the companies in the end - the engineering department ends up being a buzzkill :shrug: . I cope with it, but it never really settled with me. If anyone has the answer to how to approach this in a healthy way I am very much interested in your experience.

    1. piker · · focus · HN ↗
      > Of course I know that the original (real estate) developers did the cost analysis, but when you see those abandoned places - very much objectively you can conclude that they made an error. A miscalculation, or an error in judgement.

      Or just a good bet that didn't pay off when textile manufacturing all went to Asia?

    2. bunderbunder · · focus · HN ↗
      > Of course I know that the original (real estate) developers did the cost analysis, but when you see those abandoned places - very much objectively you can conclude that they made an error. A miscalculation, or an error in judgement.

      Or perhaps just a priority misalignment. Those real estate developers weren’t on the hook for long term maintenance costs. Nor were the town officials who ran the project, because they would in all likelihood have moved on from their current offices by the time those bills came due.

      The story is similar in tech, where people are constantly shuffling around within and among companies and average tenures on any one team are only a few years. This creates a very real moral hazard problem when it comes to longer term thinking.

    3. pkul · · focus · HN ↗
      Where do you find these types of towns? I can't really think of anything that matches that description near me so I'm curious.
      1. alentred · · focus · HN ↗
        In Europe, mostly suburban towns that grew quickly in the 60s and the 70s around the big cities to distribute the rapidly growing urban population, or in the outskirts of those cities, from what I have seen. Among related examples would be, I think, Evergrande, or countless abandoned molls [1], for example.

        [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allthatsinteresting.com&#x2F;abandoned-malls" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allthatsinteresting.com&#x2F;abandoned-malls

    4. bmitc · · focus · HN ↗
      &gt; I have visited quite a bit of small towns that were actively built I suppose in the 60-s, and often see abandoned ambitious or even grandiose projects like a park here, or a community center there - fully built but totally deserted now, often in ruins.

      I think those probably failed for different reasons, namely capitalism destroying the small town in America.

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