{"id":4563,"date":"2026-02-23T01:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=4563"},"modified":"2026-02-14T08:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T13:05:33","slug":"find-it-later-pay-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2026\/02\/find-it-later-pay-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Find It Later, Pay More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>An old saying remains true: the later we find a mistake, the more expensive it is to fix.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The later we find a mistake, the more expensive it is to fix. That is an old saying. It is still true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The saying is most-often attributed to Barry Boehm as he described it in the Cost of Change Curve. Some of us are old enough to remember the writings of Boehm. I actually met him one day at a conference. Nice enough fellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From time to time, we pretend that this thought is something old that applied in olden times when we used old technology to solve old problems. We are in a new age with new minds and everything new and, well, old sayings by old men are just old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sorry, if we find and fix a problem just prior to shipping our app, it really hurts. The problem has ties to many things and all those things have to be fixed. Well, they don&#8217;t <em>have to be<\/em> fixed, but shipping mistakes bothers some of us to no end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On shipping day, everything has tentacles. (I just learned that an octopus has arms but no tentacles while a jellyfish has hundreds of tentacles, but I digress.) Some reach too far and too wide. Rats! (more animals) And we just discovered more tentacles. Darn those tentacles. No more dry humor that isn&#8217;t humorous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Boehm&#8217;s thoughts are still correct. The later we find the mistake, the more it costs to correct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What really hurts sometimes is that it is not a mistake found late. It is a new idea introduced late. Whatever the source, we have a late change, and the later the change the more the expense. Can&#8217;t seem to avoid that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s do better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips An old saying remains true: the later we find a mistake, the more expensive it is to fix. The later we find a mistake, the more expensive it is to fix. That is an old saying. It is still true. The saying is most-often attributed to Barry Boehm as he described it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,329,63,48,339,58],"tags":[143,330,183,170,341,178],"class_list":["post-4563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-change","category-error","category-expectations","category-general-systems-thinking","category-mistakes","category-systems","tag-change","tag-error","tag-expectations","tag-general-systems-thinking","tag-mistakes","tag-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4564,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions\/4564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}