There are countless software projects that have never seen the light of day because the developers spent all the time polishing the back of the cabinet (and the product managers designing the door handles), and nobody did anything about the actual drawers.
You've seen the survivors of the process which have ugly backs of the cabinets because the developers started on the actual drawers and, because more likely than not it was somebody elses money paying for back-of-the-cabinet-polishing, and they got stopped at the end.
Also, if I have to delay the building of my kitchen because the cabinets are late, and I call the shop and they cheerfully tell me that they were ready yesterday but they haven't finished polishing the backs, oh man, I don't know how happy am I going to be about their excellent craftsmanship, you know?
maybe some hobby projects. I can't name a product that failed due to too much polishing. It's almost always due to overscoping or underfunding or political reasons. Sometimes first to market is important, but it's not the difference between success or failure simply due to timing.
>you've seen the survivors of the process which have ugly backs of the cabinets because the developers started on the actual drawers
And I've also seen "survivors" that died because the drawers weren't actually bolted on but got plenty of funding on the show floor with "no touching allowed" signs. Absolutes, sith, etc.
> if I have to delay the building of my kitchen because the cabinets are late, and I call the shop and they cheerfully tell me that they were ready yesterday but they haven't finished polishing the backs, oh man
And that's a classic miscommunication. Some managers see unnecesary polish when in reality they were still bolting the drawer in but they think "it's good enough".
Some people see all those (planes) software projects (coming back from war) being live ridden with (bullet holes) technical debt, and the first thing that comes to their mind is ("better reinforce the places with most bullet holes!") "Better make sure to deal with that technical debt!"
Fascinating!