We Will Clean It Up Later

We'll clean it up later is an AlarmBellPhrase used by incompetent managers to describe a shoddily designed or constructed (software) product. A delivery deadline is approaching, and they've given up on really fixing up, so they're just going to deliver the product as is. The hidden implication is that they will never clean it up. The antithesis of this AntiPattern is to jettison any unnecessary features for the sake of quality and time, or to eliminate the deadline completely. -- EdPoor

The definition of "later" is of course "in the next release". And it keeps to be "the next release", until the code is destabilized enough that it needs to be rewritten completely.

''On the other hand, Deming's "push quality to the end of the process" preaching allowed businesses to give their customers more value for less. Sometimes inflexible, quality-minded people are a company's greatest hindrance to success. [Could someone provide a reference to the above? My reading of WilliamEdwardsDeming was that quality had to be pervasive throughout the process.]

It works properly so long as "later" is defined to mean "the next release", and so when the time comes for the next release, you've actually done it. The problems come when sorting it out is kept always just one (or two) releases away from you, and it never gets done.

A manager says "in the next release" where a programmer would say "in my copious free time". Jot this down in your GeekToSuitDictionary?, kiddies...

"Clean It Up Later" is a phrase, that even in my short career, I have become terribly tired of. There seem to be two truths:

Programmers are more like artisans than laborers
While a laborer can easily walk away when an output produces the desired result, a programmer will likely never be happy with the end output.

To that end, "Clean It Up Later" implies that there is usually not enough refactoring occurring on a regular basis, and the misguided notion that continuous refactoring is somehow a hindrance to development. After all, RefactoringIsNotRewriting.

Michael Fagan says that making it come out right at the first stage and every stage thereafter is the least expensive way to produce anything. He collected data for 15 years before making this statement.

Phil Crosby said quality is free. It always, always, always costs more to rework it later than to do it right the first time around. He collected data for many years before making this statement, too.

See: TechnicalDebt, CleanTheKitchen