i've been that person. standing in front of leadership with an 18-month architecture diagram, explaining why we need six months of infrastructure before a user touches a single feature.
and it made sense. for 25 years it made sense.
writing boilerplate was expensive. every feature came with a tax — database migrations, routing config, auth wiring. build a shared platform first, pay that tax once. the roadmap justified the investment.
then i saw a stat that wouldn't leave me alone. roughly 60% of features on a six-month roadmap are obsolete by launch. not slightly off. obsolete. the customer's problem shifted. the market moved. you spent six months building a precise answer to a question nobody asks anymore.
the longer you invest before showing something real, the more expensive it is to admit you were wrong. so you don't. you ship the wrong thing and call it "on schedule." i've done it. i've watched it happen.
