Move, Then Adjust Archives - Page 2 of 7

Release Early, Release Often

“Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” This is lesson 7 in Eric S. Raymond’s essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.” Raymond first presented it in May 1997. O’Reilly published it in a book of the same title in 1999.

Raymond wrote that he had once believed the opposite. Early versions are “almost by definition buggy versions,” and developers did not want to “wear out the patience” of their users. Linux changed his mind. In its early days, Linus Torvalds sometimes released a new version of the kernel more than once a day.

Try Something

“It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Franklin D. Roosevelt said this on May 22, 1932, at the commencement of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.

Roosevelt was governor of New York and was running for president. In the same speech he said: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.” He won the election that November.

Plans Are Worthless

On November 14, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower told a defense conference: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” He said he had heard it “long ago in the Army.” His reason: “the very definition of ’emergency’ is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.”

Another version, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” appears in Richard Nixon’s book Six Crises (1962). Nixon was paraphrasing Eisenhower.

Real Artists Ship

At a retreat of the Macintosh team in Carmel, California, in January 1983, Steve Jobs told the team: “Real artists ship.” To ship is to deliver a finished product to customers. The account comes from team member Andy Hertzfeld, who wrote about it later. Quote Investigator concludes that Jobs popularized the expression.

The OODA loop

John Boyd, a US Air Force colonel, built a model of decision-making out of his experience of air combat: observe, orient, decide, act, then repeat. His central claim was about speed — that cycling through the loop faster than your opponent is what wins, because it leaves them reacting to a situation that has already changed. As a Weapons School instructor he was nicknamed Forty Second Boyd, for his standing bet that starting from a position of tactical disadvantage he could defeat any student pilot within forty seconds.

The model spread from the Air Force into American business and sports coaching. It is a formal argument that acting quickly beats acting correctly.

Ready, aim, fire

The correct sequence exists in English and is used mainly to mock people who follow it too literally. Analysis paralysis names the failure state, paralysis by analysis is the older form, and both treat thinking as a thing that can go on too long and become a disease.

Bias toward action

Named as a virtue and used in hiring and promotion. Amazon lists it among its leadership principles: speed matters in business, and many decisions are reversible and do not need extensive study. The word bias is chosen deliberately — it concedes that the tendency is not neutral, and recommends it anyway.

The 80 percent solution

American military and business usage: a good plan executed now beats a perfect plan executed later. The claim is not that 80 percent is acceptable, but that the remaining 20 percent costs more in delay than it returns in quality.

Paralysis

Analysis paralysis. Overthinking it. Navel-gazing. Spinning your wheels. Stuck in the weeds. American English has an unusually large vocabulary for the failure of thinking too long, and no comparable vocabulary for the failure of acting too soon. The second failure is described, when it happens, in ordinary words.

Second-time founders

Silicon Valley investors are widely understood to prefer a founder whose first company failed to one who has never started a company. The failure is priced as an asset. Whatever else it produced, it produced someone who has already made the mistakes.