Recently I’ve read some statements that keep coming to my mind at least once a week maybe more.

1 – Make it work, Make it write, Make it fast

I’m a big fond of the concept of “Right first time” but lately I’ve seen so many time being wasted trying to figure out what would be the “Right” thing to do. Many unnecessary conflicts, concerns, non-validated assumptions, etc. This made me think more often about extreme interpretations or even shallow interpretations of such concepts that when not fully understood or discussed could lead to inefficiencies everywhere.

When I have such thoughts I remember of this concept that says: Make it work, make it right, make it fast! I don’t remember exactly when I’ve heard it for the first time but I’m sure, unless my brain is tricking me, that I’ve heard it during some research about game development (which is something I kept coming back to from time-to-time) and it was related to Blizzard, one of the big players in the game industry.

Later, after some additional research, I discovered that this term is actually attributed to Kent Back and it was part of the UnixWay for a long time.

You can read more about it here: http://wiki.c2.com/?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast

Anyway, the whole idea is that when solving a problem in an iterative way you should consider to first make something that works, even if it’s not the right perfect solution. Ship it and learn from the feedback you’ll get in order to go to the second step, make it right. After rounds of improvement based on feedback then you’ll have to at some point make it fast. That will be the last step. That’s at least the intepretation that makes more sense to me.

I just feel that many times this simple and pragmatic approach will bring much more value than trying to use a sophisticated one just because everybody else is doing. But that’s just a feeling. I don’t have any data or experiment that can prove that, so maybe in the future, I can experiment with this approach and see what happens.

2 – The tiniest thing shipped is better than the best thing planned

This was something I’ve read on a blog post published by Amy Hoy on how to overcome procrastination.

You can read it here: https://stackingthebricks.com/how-to-overcome-procrastination/

This statement resonates with me because it sounds very responsive and lean, which is something I like. Also, it has a connection with the first idea as well, I believe. Living in the world of ideas and planning is super comfortable and can make you feel in control of things, but the truth is that the time will pass and all you’ll get is pure fantasy.

I spend so many hours planning stuff. I do that every day as part of my job, and I do that every day as part of my personal development. I try to make it as lean and efficient as possible. However, my feeling is that last year I tried to have the “best thing” planned instead of just shipping stuff to the real world, even if it was something small. Although I shipped, for instance, an email plugin for JIRA named Issue Events Mailer, a crap todo list style bookmark app, and another small attempts into the real world, I just have the feeling I could have done more if I had this “mantra” in my mind every time I questioned myself if what I was doing was of any value.

3 – A good plan is worth its weight in (future) gold

This one came from the same article mentioned above and also resonates with me because I learned that no plan survives contact with enemy

Also, I learned during these years of professional contact with lean and agile methodologies how bad too much planning can be. I’m not saying that plans should not exist, but we have to understand how much effort we should put on them before actually putting it in practice. At some point more planning is pure waste of time and energy that could be used for other valuable actions or tasks.

In the past things were so expensive that a well-thought plan was mandatory. The cost of repairing an error was too big. This is still true for some industries or fields of knowledge nowadays but for the great majority of software-based projects, for instance, I see these practice of thorough planning not optimal. Today is cheaper to quickly iterate, ship something, learn from it and use the feedback as input for a new iteration. That’s the base of lean and agile product and software development. Very quick cycles of plan-do-check-act. This makes me think that often just having alignment and shared understanding around the problem we’re trying to solve will be enough to a team or a person to start developing something and especially delivering something that can be used and criticized – in a constructive way – early and often.

Yes, I might have generalized things a little bit. Reality might be not as sweet as I’m painting above, but in general I believe that this principle and the previous ones should be taken more into consideration when we do or plan our plans.