Feature Focus or Bug Focus

What is more important Features or Bugs?

If ever there were an acid test for maturity in Software Development perhaps none is better than Features or Bugs. What is most important implementing a new feature or removing existing bugs?

If a developer is focused on features then they have a Feature Focus. Bug Focused developers give precedence to fixing bugs first.

Which is better? Fixing bugs. Which do new developers prefer? Implementing new features. Only over time do developers realize that as their bugs accumulate, their ability to implement new features becomes ever more difficult. One day they will experience the truly awful feeling when a newly revealed bug shows that a recently added feature will have to be completely reworked.

So what do you do if you have a crew of Feature Focused developers? This is a common problem. One solution is to use QA to give them an external souce of Bug Focus. To do this, you must be prepared to step in and support QA. At the same time you must dampen the praise given for new features. This is also simply done by insisting that only releases which have passed QA will be demonstrated.