If you’re building a complex system, you’ll gain knowledge while you’re building it, and you’ll come up with better ideas for decisions you made when you didn’t have the knowledge. Should it be rebuilt at this time or not?

  • The school that should be rebuilt
    • Trying to build a tower on a distorted foundation is a waste of adjustment costs.
    • In the long run, we need to fix the foundation now.
  • The school of thought that should not be reworked
    • The unknown is just plain simple.
    • It’s about as complicated as it gets when you actually create it.

Isn’t this “choosing the wrong two options”? Isn’t there a third option and isn’t that the right one?

The rebuilders believe that “the difference between the cost of continuing with the incorrect design and the cost of the correct design exceeds the cost of rebuilding to the correct design in the long run”. Those who do not rebuild believe that the new design, which they believe is the correct design, is not much different from the current design, and therefore the transition cost will not pay for itself. The discrepancy between these two opinions is the difference in estimating the quality of the “new design” This is “highly uncertain” because “we haven’t made it yet,” so it’s not surprising that there are differences in estimates.

A third option, “Reduce uncertainty at minimal cost.”


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