Tofu-dreg software development

A while ago while procrastinating on youtube, i came across a lovely video about “tofu-dreg” buildings in china.

I was a bit shocked and fascinated that there is a synonym for this.

Today, while cleaning up the dirt of the last couple of months in the shower, i realized, this can also be applied to software development as well.

Tofu-dreg development could be described as a feature-only development. In which all foreseeable side-, middle-, and longterm-effects are ignored by management, with the single goal to provide a deliverable product. Regardless if it is stable, maintainable, tested or only hold together by 89437589347 workarounds and hotfixes.

As long as it looks the way it is supposed to look, it’s fine.

It’s like building a house, with the idea how the house looks like.

But without:

• blueprints (we don’t need specifics, we know how a house supposed to look like)
• architect (we do not need specialists, it’s just one stone of each other!?)
• scaffolding (to expensive and time consuming to construct)
• foundation (just start, we can fix that later)
• interior plan (detail requirements are unimportant)
• specialists (again, it’s just putting one stone on each other!?)

The result is: it looks like a house, sells like a house. And as soon as someone looks a bit deeper, or wants to make adjustment, it collapses.