Cut Twice, Measure Once
The popular saying is Measure Twice, Cut Once, but it does not apply to the Software Development industry.
Often in engineering, “Measure Twice, Cut One” is a dogma. It does also mean plan carefully before execute. It is reasonable, making a mistake is expensive, so we better plan before. But we cannot apply it everywhere, for every task. Do you have ever realized how slow we would be if we measure twice everything before cut? Or plan every detail before execute? We need some criteria.
The most evident counter example is the kitchen. Can you imagine yourself measuring twice every cut in the bread just to make sure that they have the right size? That is nonsense. But, the important thing is why?
The first answer that raises to why we do not need to measure every cut, it is because we have a big margin for error. Which is right, probably we can double the size of the cut, and nothing would happen. Yet, there is more.
There is a second answer: food is cheap, thus mistakes are inexpensive. That is right. We even can fix some cases quickly. For example, if we do a cut too big, we most likely can cut it again, so we have the intended size. If we cut it too small, we can throw it away, or we can reuse somewhere else. But, there is even more.
