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> Saying "Humans suck at estimating" is nonsense. It's a skill that can easily be improved - usually at the cost of some up front planning - and there are plen
by bb88 8y ago
> Saying "Humans suck at estimating" is nonsense. It's a skill that can easily be improved - usually at the cost of some up front planning - and there are plenty of resources to help you with that.
And yet, we do. Look at the number of failed government contracts in recent history:
https://warontherocks.com/2014/12/top-10-failed-defense-programs-of-the-rma-era/ https://warontherocks.com/2014/12/top-10-failed-defense-prog...
And while much of that is about the failures in program management for large contracts, the government aims to build large things at once (as opposed to an MVP and iterations).
When a critical dependency takes longer than expected, the cost snowballs down the chain.
- AlotOfReading 8y agoThe civilian government does MVP pilot programs all the time and looking at them is one of the first steps in evaluating the merits of expensive proposals. You can't MVP a bridge or a fighter jet though, because the political and economic cost of iteration is ruinous.
- RugnirViking 8y agoBut you can mvp fighter jets - thats what prototypes are? Of course, it may seem to you like the majority of the work is done in the case of a prototype. This is not the case - a vast majority of the work that goes into developing a jet fighter consists of the documentation as to how fast it can fly, its flight ceiling, etc. Maintnence manuals, and developing a supply chain to ensure we can have a resilient delivery despite war or changes in the economy. Training programs, to ensure that pilots are able to safely learn to fly the thing Testing, which of course requires that a prototype be built in the first place.