A Simple Matter of Software

The good kind of failure

“I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”
                                                                                    - Thomas Edison

Resiliency and learning from your "mistakes" are critical to building a successful venture. 

Organizing your efforts to avoid "mistakes" and to have no risk of "failure" is a bad strategy.  Organizing your efforts to "fail faster" so that you can learn from your mistakes and course correct as you go is a good strategy.

It is important to distinguish between making new mistakes which are the good kind that you learn from; and simply repeating the same mistakes that have been made before and should now be avoidable.

                                                                               copyright 2007 Kerry Champion

You can't improve without change

Different Isn't Always Better, But Better's Always Different
                                                      -  Jonathan Schwartz

Adding engineers to a late project can make it later

 

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.
                                                                       - Ambrose Bierce

The Mythical Man-Month recognized in the software engineering world the fallacy that work is arbitrarily sub-dividable and fungible, but obviously Brooks was foreshadowed. 

One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds becuase he has freedom of movement, no need to coordinate his actions, and can focus on his task.  Sixty men digging a posthole spend more time coordinating, cooperating and avoiding each other, than they do actually digging.  Similarly in other tasks there is an optimal point were people can work together effectively and efficiently, beyond that point you start to get diminishing (and eventually negative) returns with each person added to the effort.

                                                                               copyright 2007 Kerry Champion 

Simplicity is hard work

"I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn't have the time."
                                                   - Mark Twain

 

Elegant definition of simplicity

"Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means"
                                                 - Dr. Koichi Kawana