I've worked in plenty too. They start out faster. Delivery and quality both decrease almost imperceptibly for a long period. When somebody who understood how everything was built leaves because they got offered 20% more elsewhere, delivery and quality both plunge quite a lot and the decline accelerates.
It's incredibly unusual for them to recover delivery speed and quality after not doing automated testing for so long. It's incredibly hard to "bolt on" testing afterwards - both because the culture and context isn't there but also because the tooling and infrastructure can't be built up in a week. Most companies in this state look for quick fixes like:
* Elaborate branching strategies
* Entirely different versions of the software for different clients (because you're too afraid to upgrade them all).
* Ever more infrequent releases.
The next step is technical bankruptcy. That's when your devs start whingeing about wanting to do a full rewrite. That's usually the point where you've probably ended up losing money overall by dodging tests.
It can work without tests you manage to hit product/market fit before the decline sets in, but I find that companies in this situation often tend to struggle developing and will often stagnate. 1/50 might tap into some undiscovered new market opportunity and hit it out of the park either way but it's rare.
It's incredibly unusual for them to recover delivery speed and quality after not doing automated testing for so long. It's incredibly hard to "bolt on" testing afterwards - both because the culture and context isn't there but also because the tooling and infrastructure can't be built up in a week. Most companies in this state look for quick fixes like:
* Elaborate branching strategies
* Entirely different versions of the software for different clients (because you're too afraid to upgrade them all).
* Ever more infrequent releases.
The next step is technical bankruptcy. That's when your devs start whingeing about wanting to do a full rewrite. That's usually the point where you've probably ended up losing money overall by dodging tests.
It can work without tests you manage to hit product/market fit before the decline sets in, but I find that companies in this situation often tend to struggle developing and will often stagnate. 1/50 might tap into some undiscovered new market opportunity and hit it out of the park either way but it's rare.