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I really love this article. In practice a good strategy for companies is reduce unknown to a minimum, the Steve Jobs strategy, just focusing on very few produc

I really love this article. In practice a good strategy for companies is reduce unknown to a minimum, the Steve Jobs strategy, just focusing on very few products, with each having the less complexity possible(simplify and simplify). Only focusing on very few products you could make perfection possible, estimates will be off, they always are when there is unknown, but at least completion will be finite (you will complete it!, which is number one issue with research work for example). Sounds simple, but is really hard, leaving creative people on their own is dangerous for this reason, they could start new projects, not finishing anything.

greenyoda 13y ago
Reducing the complexity of products is an enticing ideal, but in reality, some products are inherently complex. Let's take one of Steve Jobs' products, iOS, as an example. No matter how much you try to simplify it, it's going to be a huge piece of software (I'm guessing hundreds of developers and supporting staff). Apple's success has depended on keeping customers engaged by regularly coming out with improved versions of products, so they need to estimate fairly accurately what the release dates are going to be: being six months late could be disastrous for marketing efforts and the company's stock price (e.g., you want to get the next version of the iPhone in the stores by Christmas). So you can be sure that there are people at Apple whose job it is to make very careful estimates of how long it will take to develop stuff.