“Fail Fast, Fail Cheap” Sounds Like Scrum
July 1st, 2007 by HalThere is such an urge to get our projects right. Not approximately right. Right, as "Do it right the first time." Projects are not like that, especially design projects. Norman Bodek has been speaking about two principal ways we learn: copying the successful actions of others and making mistakes. If making mistakes is part of learning, then we better be making many of them to produce successful projects. BW SmallBiz agrees: Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, June/July 2007, by Doug Hall.
I've come to appreciate the value of "good enough".
Doug proposes two kinds of prototyping as a fail fast, fail cheap approach. The first is a "looks like" prototype. The second is a "works like" prototype. He says the first prototype can be just a description of the product or function. And he points to a prototype made with duct tape for a works like prototype for a redesign of a product line.
As I have been doing my Scrum project, I've come to appreciate the value of "good enough". Good enough is not "right". In fact, some of our good enough solutions are full of mistakes. Mistakes that I can see we will address in future work if and only if the product owner wants to proceed. The Scrum approach is a learning approach. Do a little; learn a little; do a little more.
Doug Hall finishes his article describing the economics of the fail fast, fail cheap approach. He contrasts a company that spends a year and $100,000 on developing a new product. He contrasts that with doing something in a week that only costs $1,000. If you did every week of the year you'd spend half of that one year project. And if you do it in the style of Scrum, then you'll have something usable each step of the way. Fail fast, fail cheap. It's a great Scrum motto.
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