Achieving Failure (feat. Eric Ries) 19:41s
“When you do waterfall, you have this problem I call “achieving failure” where you successfully build the wrong thing. “ Eric Ries @ Talks at Google, 2011 19:41
The idea of achieving success yet building the wrong thing:
- You can be on time
- You can be on budget
- You can be high quality
- You can have a beautiful design
Yet you can be creating something that no ones wants it, or something that people want but your constituents are not happy doing. Or, something that people want, constituents are happy, and it’s not great to the world. The long run with alignment with the values for the company, the world, and its constituents, on the other hand, is bigger idea, quite challenging.
How the phenomenon may be perceived
“If you go to a startup board meeting, or a milestone review meeting for most new products. What do we talk about? Milestones. We are on track, we are building features that we said we were gonna build. We talk about our gross numbers, like, Hey we have this many customers just like we said.” Eric Ries @ Talks at Google, 2011 19:52
References
Eric Ries, 2011, The Lean Startup at Talks at Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEvKo90qBns
