{"id":3217,"date":"2020-09-21T01:26:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T06:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=3217"},"modified":"2020-09-09T17:40:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T22:40:03","slug":"fail-fast-fail-early-at-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2020\/09\/fail-fast-fail-early-at-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Fail Fast, Fail Early (at what?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Fail fast, fair early is a mantra in today&#8217;s knowledge work. Sometimes, however, we are confused about what is a failure.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fail fast, fail early! (Some persons say it the other way around and mean the same thing.) The idea is simple:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Try something<\/li><li>Learn something<\/li><li>Adjust<\/li><li>Go back to step 1.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;But we are not allowed to fail,&#8221; protest some. True. If you are a firefighter, you need to extinguish the house fire on the first try. Same thing with heart surgeons. The list goes on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then there is the notion of what constitutes &#8220;failure.&#8221; &#8220;We tested the product, and it failed the test.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wrong. A test or an experiment fails when it does not provide information. Consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We built a product that should work at zero degrees F. We tested it, and it stopped working at 20 degrees F.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That test was a success. It provided information. The product does not work as desired. Our activities succeeded. We learned. Our product failed. We learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The main point is, &#8220;we learned.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let us strive to conduct good experiments often. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So instead of <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&#8220;Fail fast, fail early&#8221;<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">how about <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&#8220;Experiment often.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips Fail fast, fair early is a mantra in today&#8217;s knowledge work. Sometimes, however, we are confused about what is a failure. Fail fast, fail early! (Some persons say it the other way around and mean the same thing.) The idea is simple: Try something Learn something Adjust Go back to step 1. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,389,259,48,316,20,398],"tags":[227,444,260,170,317,142,401],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-experiment","category-failure","category-general-systems-thinking","category-improvement","category-learning","category-practice","tag-engineering","tag-experiment","tag-failure","tag-general-systems-thinking","tag-improvement","tag-learning","tag-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3218,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions\/3218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}