> Whereas I don't believe I've seen a project fail because too much time was spent ensuring code was well written and well tested.
Oh I definitely have. In fact I'd wager that it's the leading cause of failure for programmer lead startups. It's far too easy to spend time worrying about code and ignoring the business when your skillset lies in code and not in business.
Sure, but that's failure due to not getting the business requirements right. If the code had been hastily thrown together with no regard for process it's hard to believe it would've produced a better outcome.
Well it's priorities, no? If you spend the time to get the code right, you're not spending time validating your business or talking to customers. And indeed "getting your code right" is a very common excuse to not ship.
I suppose I'm enough of a traditionalist to believe the two skillsets - one being validating a business/talking to customers and the other being the actual software development side of things are sufficiently different that it's extremely rare that one individual is going to handle them both well.
Oh I definitely have. In fact I'd wager that it's the leading cause of failure for programmer lead startups. It's far too easy to spend time worrying about code and ignoring the business when your skillset lies in code and not in business.