A brute force solution that works is better than an elegant solution that doesn't work.

It's better to wait for a productive programmer to become available than it is to wait for the first available programmer to become productive.

Even when you have skilled, motivated, hard-working people, the wrong team structure can undercut their efforts instead of catapulting them to success. A poor team structure can increase development time, reduce quality, damage morale, increase turnover, and ultimately lead to project cancellation.

A brute force solution that works is better than an elegant solution that doesn't work.

The default movement on a software project should be in the direction of taking elements of the software away to make it simpler rather than adding elements to make it more complex.

Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often. What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better.

Engineering is the application of scientific principles toward practical ends. If the engineering isn't practical, it's bad engineering.