The art of not being too good at the Marshmallow test

Martin Henk Co-founder, Head of Product Management

January 25, 2016

Pipedrive today• More than 10,000 customers from over 130 different countries• 130 people across 4 offices

The Marshmallow test

What has that to do with software?

Time

Scalability / Code quality / etc

?

Picking the PHP frameworkTime to decision: 10 seconds

Pain to implement: 1

Pain to maintain: 6

Scalability: 3

HTML5 and Cordova mobile appsTime to decision: a few weeks

Pain to implement: 5

Pain to maintain: 9

Scalability: 0

Getting rid of the monolithTime to decision: a year

Pain to implement: 5

Pain to maintain: 3

Scalability: 10?

A database per companyTime to decision: a few months

Pain to implement: 3

Pain to maintain: 2

Scalability: 10

In summaryHacks are great for getting started

But could come back to bite you in the ass later

Usually it’s a good problem to have

Decisions are progress

Postponing decisions for too long can paralyze the organization