No milestones without inches

Today, a few of what passes for Illuminati in our office sat down to look at an open source bug-tracker that I'd suggested. I was pitching it mainly on the strength of the fact that it should allow us to schlep all the info. from our current system into its database. But I was careful to emphasize how much custom coding it would need to clean up the undeniably ugly interface, plus one or two other potential deal-breakers.

When it was all said and done, my suggestion was pretty much shot down. But I was expressly thanked for taking the time to put the software in question through its paces. Partly for etiquette's sake, no question. But also because--for as much griping as the current system draws--I was, apparently, the only developer to put forth any alternative, however not-ready-for-prime-time.

Count me doubly-surprised there...but also reminded of why it's awesome to work for peeps who don't consider their time "wasted" by anything short of perfection. Namely because, externally, folks usually only see product milestones. But internally, it's a game of inches--same as anywhere else. And any "manager" who doesn't grok that differences in context doesn't deserve the title.