Since the dawn of software development, we’ve been faced with the same impossible choice every single day: do it quick or do it well. We do our best to make the right choice for the task at hand, and we move on. Then came the lean startups & “Move fast and break things” and put their thumbs on the scale in the favor of the hacks, the MVPs, the just-ship-its, and the Product Managers just ate. it. up.

That’s great, for proving a concept or finding a market fit. But what happens when that’s all you do? When the entire organization, top to bottom, has collectively forgotten how to write quality software. When you become unable to make the correct technical decision even by accident.

We will take a deep dive on a mission critical web application that is basically unusable on its best day, and trace the trivial bad decisions that got it there.

You will never take a shortcut again.