Shift Left Is the Tip of the Iceberg

For those not aware, Shift Left[1] is (at this point) an old term that was coined for a specific use case, but now refers to a general concept. The concept is that, if you do needed things earlier in a product cycle, it will end up reducing your expense and time in the long run, even if it seems like it's taking longer for you to "get somewhere" earlier on. I think this[2] article is a good no-nonsense explainer for "Why Shift Left?".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift-left_testing [2] https://www.dynatrace.com/news/blog/what-is-shift-left-and-w...

Sounds like a similar/parallel thought to the project management waterfall paradigm whereby the earlier you get things correct (left) the less costly it is in the long run or conversely if you have to go and re-do things later on (right) you’re in for a shock (either cost, time or quality).

I’ve come to the conclusion that Kent Beck got just about everything right with Extreme Programming. There’s just not a formal training industry out there pushing it so many more people are selling and invested in other approaches with a lot of warts.

XP is almost the opposite or shift right, similar to how every other “agile” development form pushes the necessary work forward. I think it’s telling that none of the modern software design systems seem to have given us a world where our industry is capable of delivering software on time and within budget. They’ve been around for 20 years, places follow them religiously and still fail.

Maybe everything about those concepts are just wrong? I mean, you can have people like Uncle Bob who’ll tell you that “you just got it wrong”. He’s also always correct in this, but if so many teams “get it wrong” then maybe things like clean, xp and so on simply suck?