Urgency is a great excuse.
Hiding behind hurry is easy, especially when it is real. It is an attractive excuse to postpone something unpleasant indefinitely.
In a software project, for example, who would want to find new bugs if it meant extra work? After all, we are in a hurry already.
Projects often start steady and peaceful. Then the pace gets quicker, and finally, the urgency takes a chokehold of us. We fuel the last days of release cycles by kebab, coffee, and maybe some sleep deprivation.
In reality, the urgency is a collection of project risks manifesting into a lack of resources.
To my experience, these problems are most typical in projects where testing is a side hustle of that ‘mysterious someone’. In such a setting, someone tests if there is time to do it. But urgency is a great excuse.
We don’t have time. Let’s test tomorrow.
In fact, this is the way to end up extinguishing fires, rolling out emergency updates and a series of warranty fixes. Deadlines become impossible to meet because we face a surprise after another.
Testing tells the truth about the state of our product and our project.
The earlier we learn the truth, the easier it is to plan and re-plan the road ahead.
Don’t hide behind excuses. Test early. Test often.
