“Fail early, fail often.”

“Minimum Viable Product.”

“Building the airplane while flying it.

“Ship it, fix it, ship it again.”

“Move fast and break things.”

Behind each of these cute design slogans are millions of horror stories of myopic leaders, sub-optimal designs, terrible decisions, products that can’t scale, systems architectures that look like bubblegum and bailing twine, and failed start-ups. It’s the bane of simple tropes that hide complex systems.