On 2010-03-17, at 12:52 PM, Alexander Lazarević <laza at blobworks.com>  
wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 19:10, Ken G. Brown <kbrown at mac.com> wrote:
>> In my experience it is almost always better to think things through  
>> and fix known issues instead of rushing for some arbitrary deadline.
>
> I think this depends on our goals. I would like to see us aiming for
> continuous improvement rather than instant perfection at some distant
> time in the future. And my understanding of continuous improvement
> also includes more frequent releases.
> Rebasing the trunk tree on 4.0 makes an excellent goal for me and
> would justify a 0.1 incremented release.
>
>> Do it right the first time.
>
> This would make having sex a misión imposible ;)
>
> Alex
>

You've got a good point there! :)
However I see that perhaps generalisims don't always apply.

I am referring to the conclusions that HP came up with years ago when  
they studied why the Japanese manufacturing seemed to be doing so  
well. They evidently sent a team over to study Japanese management  
techniques. After some time they discovered that they appeared to  
strive for incremental improvement, and if they discovered a defect,  
say in an electronic board, they would take the time to not only  
correct the defect, but also fix the underlying cause of the defect,  
always working towards the long term improvement of the processes, not  
the short term gain. US manufacturing tended towards the short term  
only.
HP instituted quite a few of these improved concepts in their board  
manufacturing and as I recall saved something like $20 million the  
first year, just in reduced inventory of electronics waiting for  
testing.

Their conclusion was 'do it right the first time' even if it makes the  
schedule slip. If you know there is something wrong, take the time to  
fix.

Anyone interested can grab some of the well known books on Japanese  
Manufacturing for some good concepts.

And I've personally had to deal with fixing things on customer sites  
that were rushed out unfinished to meet an arbitrary deadline. It's  
very expensive and embarassing to say the least.

Let's not rush 4.1 out to try to cover the shortfalls caused by  
rushing 4.0 out with fanfare even before the deal is signed and sealed.

   Ken G. Brown
from my iPhone