When I started a new job as a product manager, my company president said, “You need to find out why development is broken. Our developers are terrible—they can’t seem to ship anything.”
So I sat down with my developers and said, “The word is that you’re terrible and never ship anything.”
The lead developer said, “I’m sure that’s how it looks from the executive corner but, actually, we’re practicing what we call ‘requirements aging.’ We don’t work on anything for a month because some executive usually changes the requirements before we can begin.”
And sure enough, a few minutes later, the VP of Engineering came in and said, “Guys, stop what you’re doing. I’m getting new requirements.”