Three Reasons Why Your Software Is So Far Behind Schedule

The piece argues that late software projects often show the same patterns. A long onboarding process for new developers points to technical debt, a test suite can become too large or too broken to help, and keeping servers in-house often adds cost and friction that cloud services avoid.

Reading notes

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• New developer onboarding time can be a practical sign of technical debt.
• If a new developer cannot set up and push code quickly, the project likely has hidden complexity.
• Test suites often decay when they are not run regularly or when schedule pressure makes maintenance secondary.
• A smaller test suite that is actually used is better than a larger suite that is ignored.
• Large companies often keep their own servers, but the article argues that cloud providers usually make more sense unless there is an exceptional reason not to move.
• The article treats these as recurring antipatterns seen in projects that are already behind schedule.