Broken windows accelerates software entropy

Software entropy needs active energy to be exerted to be fought (you need energy to move hot air - fridge). Unfortunately, fighting this entropy off from teams' perspective is difficult when there is a broken window (Broken windows theory) because people feel less hopeful about the effort they put in. Worse, when neglect kicks in (resulting in more broken windows), software entropy will grow faster.

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References

The Pragmatic Programmer (pp. 6-7).

We've seen clean, functional systems deteriorate pretty quickly once windows start breaking. There are other factors that can contribute to software rot, and we'll touch on some of them elsewhere, but. Neglect accelerates the rot faster than any other factor.

Backlinks

• Failure to influence change may cause burnout
  • Unfortunately, Influencing without authority is hard, and the failure to prioritise debts can worsen the situation faster (Broken windows accelerates software entropy).
• No broken window maintains standard
  • Broken windows accelerates software entropy, therefore doing the opposite, where we have no broken, may encourages people to keep that state. People tend to give extra care as they don't want to be the person who breaks the window first.