Strong defaults,held loosely.
Four principles hold across every engagement. They are not a methodology, and none of them survives contact with a project unchanged. They are the defaults we argue from.
Technology by need, not by hype
We read the release notes so you don't have to: models, frameworks, tooling. Nothing enters a project because it is fashionable. It enters when the need justifies it.
POCs are the playground
Prototypes are where the risk belongs: newest models, unproven ideas, code we fully intend to throw away. A week of honest experimentation is the cheapest insurance a roadmap can buy.
Production is a promise
Shipping is a different discipline. Proven tools, tests, observability, documentation. A system is not done when it works; it is done when it keeps working after everyone stops watching.
Debt is a loan, not a gift
Trading tech for business, or product for speed, is a normal move. Doing it for two years straight is not. We keep the ledger visible, so every trade stays a decision instead of a habit.
Build fast in iterations. Think hard enough to need fewer of them.
Agile sets the rhythm, Lean sets the restraint. Every iteration ships something real. Every pause exists to make the next iteration smaller, or unnecessary.
Build, iterate
Short cycles, working software, demos of the real thing rather than a slide about it. The point of shipping early is not speed for its own sake; it is finding out which assumptions were wrong while they are still cheap to fix.
Think, subtract
The cheapest iteration is the one you never had to build. An afternoon at the whiteboard regularly beats a month of refactoring.
The same people, two sets of rules.
Deliberately so. Confusing the two is how prototypes end up in production, and how production ends up moving like a prototype.
On a POC
- Move fast, break things
- Newest models and frameworks
- Throwaway code allowed
- Measured in days
In production
- Boring where it should be
- Proven, supported tools
- Tested and observable
- Measured in years