Beneficial Projects Should Last Longer

A suggestion made on GreatFailureOfXp while looking for dimensions along which to compare methodologies.

One might imagine rather that "beneficial" projects would last for less time, but perhaps have a greater likelihood of second phases, or further work with the same development team. Compare with AlistairCockburn's idea that development is like a game, and part of winning that game is getting to play again.

According to Tracy Kidder (SoulOfaNewMachine?), the engineers at DataGeneral called Alistair's game "Pinball".

They didn't have to name the bigger game. Everyone who had been on the team for a while knew what it was called. It didn't involve stock options. Rasala and Alsing and many of the team had long since decided that they would never see more than token rewards of a material sort. The bigger game was "pinball". West had coined the term; all the old hands used it. "You win one game, you get to play another. You win with this machine, you get to build the next." Pinball was what counted. It was the tacit promise that lay behind signing up, at least for some. THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE, Tracy Kidder, 1981, p228