• Steve Jobs faked full signal strength and swapped devices during the first iPhone demo due to fragile prototypes and bug-riddled software.
• Engineers got drunk during the presentation to calm their nerves.
• Despite the challenges, Jobs successfully completed the 90-minute demonstration without any noticeable issues.
My company was hired to consult on a startup in the financial industry, a product for banks, that was having bad tech debt and dirty code problems.
We were on site for a couple of months, pairing with the engineers and interviewing management.
One of the rules we recommended they implement was that the CEO (who was the sales staff) was not allowed to sell features that weren’t working yet.
The eliminated ultra tight surprise deadlines on new features, and enabled the engineering team to take it easy and produce better code at a deliberate pace.
Another rule was that there was one release per week, and no more.