At what point in a project should developers start to "eat their own dog food"? [closed]

Question

We have a project coming up where the PM is insistent that the team should "eat their own dog food"?

At what point is it realistic to do this?

e.g. assume we have to write an editor. We can't use this editor at the beginning to actually code because it doesn't exist. We have to use another editor.

For a while during the project, using a buggy editor is going to slow the project down and will be counter productive.

So at what point do we switch?

Update: After some discussion within the team, the points we will stress during development are:

• Implement smallest subset possible to start off with
• Identify critical features asap
• Only switch some of the developers to use the new product to minimise risk

Answer 1

Some of you should be using it as soon as you possibly can. The first version should be stripped-down, with only the most essential features that you need in order to use it as an (in this case) editor. Once you start using it you'll find out in a hurry which features are important.

Answer 2

<rant>

don't produce dog food, then you don't have to eat dog food.

what is the origin of this sick and stupid phrase anyway? dogs don't produce their own food (with one vulgar exception)...

</rant>

ask the PM what is more important: using the product under development to do development, or producing quality code on time? if there's a conflict, which is more important?

the common-sense answer is: use the thing you are building when it is better than the tools you have.

Answer 3

You don't have to switch to using the development editor exclusively. Start using it until it impacts your production, make a list of the things that are problematic, fix them, repeat until you are able to productively use it most/all of the time.