The Most Common Mistake Software Development Organizations Make Over the course of my career as a software engineer and consultant, I have worked with a wide variety of organizations, from nimble startups to sprawling enterprises. Despite differences in size, industry, and tools used, I have noticed a recurring and troubling pattern: a majority of these organizations consistently neglect one of the most fundamental aspects of software development, maintaining structured, well-designed, and well-documented code. I estimate that at least two-thirds of the organizations I have worked with make this same critical mistake. They focus almost exclusively on output and delivery deadlines, often under the umbrella of Agile methodologies, but fail to ensure that the code being produced is clean, maintainable, and well-understood. The Consequences of Neglecting Code Quality When teams skip esse...