“Make it work”

I know a managers that use ‘make it work’ as an implicit demand, knowing they’re asking you to do the impossible with inadequate resources and forcing you to deal with it- as if it isn’t they’re responsibility. I know developers that are all too eager to say they’ll ‘make it work’, as a way to justify delivering mediocre result- it is a way to ignore the real problems they don’t have the will to deal with.

I know managers who refuse to ‘make it work’, holding back progress because it isn’t perfect, but being forced to release something far under expectations in the end. I know developers who refuse to ‘make it work’, and don’t realize how their selfish whining hurts the team.

Telling someone to ‘make it work’ is not an acceptable course of action. Find out what they need and reconcile what they can deliver with what resources are available. You should be deciding on something clearly achievable, and executing.

‘Making it work’ is not an aspiration. If you are the ‘make it work’ guy, you are, by definition, delivering consistently mediocre work, and short changing your teammates who need to deal with your shortcomings and are perceived as less productive.