I had a boss who relentlessly focused on getting things done, neglecting anything but the immediate cost. If the cost could be pushed into the future (well, that wasn't the calculation - it was more like 'can I ignore this right now') then it was. He built up a whole lot of technical debt that was expensive to deal with, and some never was dealt with, so continued costing permanently. Any thoughts?
Tech debt is a HUGE deal. Since I work alone (for the most part) these days, it’s an absolute killer.
I can’t afford it at all.
The single biggest guarantor of a massive debt (IMNSHO) is a rigid up-front specification.
Or the lack of any meaningful upfront planing.
This goes in both ways. But I agree of course with the above. Detailed specs, especially done in some ivory tower, will cause massive problems, no question.
I call the upfront spec my "Napkin Sketch." It's often a single diagram.
True IME. Any time I see the word Agile, I now consider it to mean Clusterfuck In Progress.
It's kind of sad, though. What you said above ("I’ve learned to adopt an 'organic' project process, based on the assumption that it’s impossible to know the end result when I start.") is literally what Agile was trying to convey when it started out.
My experience is that things go pear-shaped when those pesky "people" get involved. It's all great on paper, and in the theoretical perfect world, but as soon as people start getting involved, and developing their own mental models, it can cause problems.
A big factor, as well (IMNSHO), is that a lot of folks decided that they wanted to be "gatekeepers" of the methodology, so they started to formalize it, and develop a vocabulary that they "own."
That happens with pretty much everything.
I'm old, grumpy, and very experienced. A great deal of the programming that I do is "instinctual." I don't stop and say "This would be a great place for OBSERVER!". I just go ahead and set up a subscription management utility, and don't give a damn what it's called.
In my experience, every time we come to a "new paradigm," a great deal of it is really just a formalization or rebranding of concepts that have been around for years.