alt Hacker NewsI used to think this. Then I noticed how often "preparation" became its own infinite loop.
At work we built something from a 2-page spec in 4 months. The competing team spent 8 months on architecture docs before writing code. We shipped. They pivoted three times and eventually disbanded.
Planning has diminishing returns. The first 20% of planning catches 80% of the problems. Everything after that is usually anxiety dressed up as rigor.
The article's right about one thing: doing it badly still counts. Most of what I know came from shipping something embarrassing, then fixing it.
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Is it always like that? I worked in teams where we had some planning beforehand (months, like in your example). We shipped just fine and the product started to bring money. I guess it depends, as usual.
That’s not a zero-sum game.
Pivoting to zero-planning, would also have a basket of flaws.
I think you may have slightly misunderstood the article.
"Preparation" isn't mentioned explicitly, but by my reading it would come firmly under "is not doing the thing".