This sounds all too familiar

[johnridley]

We've had our share of projects here that shipped late, in a couple of cases YEARS late, because the managers kept going to Microsoft Developers Conferences and getting convinced that if they didn't switch to the latest thing and rewrite all the stuff they'd been working on for the last 2 years, the product would suck.

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/09/09/25/1257226/The-Duct-Tape-Programmer

"Joel Spolsky sings the praises of The Duct Tape Programmer, who delivers programming teams from the evil of 'architecture astronauts' who might otherwise derail a project with their faddish programming craziness. The say-no-to-over-engineering attitude of the Duct Tape Programmer stems not from orneriness, but from the realization that even a 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it's in your lab where you're endlessly polishing the damn thing. Like Steve Jobs, Duct Tape Programmers firmly believe that Real Artists Ship."

Comments

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

One of the folks at work also pointed this out. But they seemed to apply it to people who bothered to do architecture in the product - you know... actually thinking what the thing should do rather than a mess of incoherent features.