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Lessons learned at 37signals
In this talk, Jason discusses what he’s learned at 37signals over the years. Topics covered: The idea that you should “fail early, fail often” is bogus. Plans are guesses. Interruption is the enemy of productivity. Sell your byproduct. Emulate chefs. Focus on what won’t change. If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now.
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ML
on 15 Dec 09FYI: Video of this speech, along with the Q&A that followed, is available at 37signals’ Featured Presentations, Keynotes, and Interviews page.
Dustin
on 15 Dec 09I think that typically people say “Fail early” to get people to stop worrying about failure and just get out there and do it. Don’t be perfect, if you’re afraid of failure and it paralyzes you, then fail so you’re not afraid of failure so you can keep taking action and succeed.
Being patient with your idea, sure, not a bad idea. However, there’s a lot of people who are so afraid to fail that their idea never sees the light of day.
George
on 15 Dec 09Great speech! Interesting points about failure. I don’t really agree though. I don’t think that there are 1,000,000 possibilities and I do think you can learn a lot from failures.
However, more importantly than that is the idea that the proof is in the proverbial pudding, and 37signals is good pudding. Your services are outstanding, and it’s wonderful how they are different from the status quo. And, they are simple and easy to use!
Jeffrey Tang
on 15 Dec 09Love what you said about our obsession with failure. It’s something that’s been bothering me for a while now. I get where this “fail early, fail often” advice comes from (the need to get people to defy fear and take action), but in the echo chamber it’s grown completely out of proportion.
Failure is not the goal, and learning from failure is not the goal. Learning from failure is what you do so that it’s not a total loss. Doing things right is the goal.
The points about selling your byproducts are spot on as well. After blogging for a while, it’s become clear to me that the best blogs aren’t products in and of themselves; they’re byproducts of what the blogger(s) is already doing. A good blog is a byproduct of life.
enver aydin
on 16 Dec 09I think;After blogging for a while, it’s become clear to me that the best blogs aren’t products in and of themselves.
David Seruyange
on 17 Dec 09There’s a semantic around failure that probably shouldn’t be ignored. Failure in a business sense, like the furniture store down the street that closes, is different from failure in the “Agile Programming” sense (where I believe that catchphrase originated) which is this idea that human communication is a source of failure in the design of complex systems, so that “failing” early really means correcting and iterating through a design process.
A more concrete example of the Agile notion of failure is a scenario I’ve been in many times: a customer has a business process they want me to model in software. They think it’s simple/straightforward but are not thinking with enough detail or they are ignoring important edge cases. I don’t know how their business maps to software well enough to apprehend these in our first few discussions. Rather than trying to figure all these out ahead of time, I push to get them a version of the software they can use and discover the edge cases in so that we can move forward. It’s also a good way of determining priorities – some things that might seem important end up being side issues and something taken for granted becomes a real area to focus on and improve.
It’s not that I’m an agile fanboy, it just seems like the word fail loses its meaning when used by different people for completely different circumstance.
All of that said, I just wanted to register my different perspective. I really appreciate the work and influence coming from 37signals. Too often there are things like this which would be good for management to hear even though it goes against all their safe, traditionalist sentiments.
Brian
on 21 Dec 09Been loving the audio being posted on SvN. Keep it coming. Jeffery’s point on fail, “in the echo chamber it’s grown completely out of proportion” sums it up. It has become a good example of cliche.
This discussion is closed.