Apparently my managers are very happy this year with my performance and what I accomplished.
At the start of the year, I pretty much got full development ownership of several projects... and well there were lot's of issues. Over the year, I proposed and implemented several improvements (among many other tasks) including: automated build and deployment, automated (integration) testing, and application and procedures documentation.
Now the overall benefits are greater stability (less PROD issues), smaller iterations, faster turnaround, and clearer understanding of code... but to be honest, all I really considered was: What's in it for me? how will it make my job easier? How much will it cost me (in effort)?
I think many people under pressure or time constraints just think how can I fix the immediate issue?
While the most immediate and simple solution may work really well, often it's just a quick fix and if you don't do anything else, it will may come back in the distant future as a bigger problem.
My approach is... OK immediate issue fixed, now how do I make sure I never have to deal with this problem ever again or at least greatly reduce the likelihood that I will.
And usually the answer involves all those great benefits that my managers seem to like :)
See... short-term lazy people cut corners and then it usually comes back to bite them with bigger problems.
Long-term lazy people know duct-tape solutions lead to bigger problems and there for invest more time and thought on how to make sure the solution is mostly future-proof.
I'd rather spend 2 days figuring out how to automate our builds, rather than spending 1 day a week (or month) just on packaging and deploying programs.
Or I'd rather spend a week thinking about good design, implementation, and testing out prototypes, instead of 2 days a week putting out Production fires caused by lousy design.
And it's not just time, because usually the longer option is also much more boring.
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