Certain phrases are considered curse words on my teams. They represent the opposite culture which I try to instill. We strive for continuous improvement and innovation. We cannot settle or become overly comfortable, because technology moves at the speed of light. We must always be learning and thinking ahead.
Here are a few of those:
"That's the way we've always done it..."
Or also, "We've done it this way for years." If you hear this often, it generally means your team is probably far behind high-performing teams. Getting complacent or not having a constant pulse on improvement will eventually make your team irrelevant.
"Legacy system"
Why does this legacy system still exist? It is likely that managing it is painful, it contains critical security holes, and only a few employees understand it. Removing or upgrading it will reap many positive benefits. Quantify those, demonstrate the value, and kill the legacy stuff!
"Temporary code"
There is nothing more permanent than temporary code. We spend a little bit more time up front to get things right and not have to pay the price three-fold in the future (when things may break or require additional efforts due to earlier "shortcuts").
"Manual work"
We believe in automating everything. We want to be doing deep work tasks, letting the machines handle the trivial stuff.
Changing culture and creating the time to innovate does not come overnight, but demonstrating small wins along the way helps to reinforce the desired behavior.
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