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Discussion on: Is Your Engineering Focus on Product or Craft?

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kwstannard profile image
Kelly Stannard

Like you, I lean heavily towards the "Product Engineer" mindset (although I'd not heard that phrase until now). My first question is usually "What problem does this feature solve?". This is a habit that has developed naturally -- I've had too many carefully crafted features that went unused and unloved. Those failures sting, and so one learns to ask the question. That and empathising with users. After all, I'm quite often a frustrated user of software myself!

Interesting. I think I lean more towards asking questions about craft and systems because I have been bitten too many times by technical debt making completing features hard or sometimes even impossible.

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Very good point. I guess that just furthers the case that craft and product aren't mutually exclusive. If anything, they're two stages of the same process: product first, craft second. It's possible to ask questions about both.

My thinking is: all unused features are technical debt, regardless of how well they're crafted. They're all noise. Any time spent on them is wasted up front and then multiplied in their maintenance. (Although, as with any grand statement, there are no doubt exceptions.)

Perhaps there should be a distinction to be made between types of technical debt: Used and Unused. I would tend to treat the two very differently.

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kwstannard profile image
Kelly Stannard

Agreed.