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> False dichotomy.

Not really. This is the fact of real world software development: your resources are limited, and either you invest them creating value for customers so that they choose your product over your competitor's or they choose your competitor's instead.

If you spend your resources on technical debt and clearing bug backlogs even of obscure nonblocking bugs, you're just spending your resources to offer your users more of the same. If you instead use your resources to deliver new features that might have a nonblocking bug here or there, you're improving your position over the competitor's.

Time to market matters. A lot. There is no such thing as time to empty backlog.




> If you instead use your resources to deliver new features that might have a nonblocking bug here or there, you're improving your position over the competitor's.

In the short term. Features can attract new customers but software that is frustrating to use due to a lot of low level bugs will repel existing customers towards competitors over the long term. If you've simultaneously decided tech debt isn't worth addressing then your competitor can easily overtake you. Furthermore adding feature after feature eventually leads to a kitchen sink product where potential customers are put off by the learning curve. This is really just a variation on the quantitative fallacy that ignores qualitative aspects.




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