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The “errors” that mean you’re doing it right

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Intellectually we know that failures are inevitable when we’re striving, growing, and learning. In practice we’re not always so understanding when it comes to our teams, our revenue targets, and especially when it comes to flogging ourselves. Indeed, not all errors signify progress. Some are negligence, or just bad luck. We don’t always learn from failure; in fact, sometimes there’s nothing in particular to learn. The following “errors” are the natural by-product of good decisions, or the result of a fundamentally positive circumstance that is attended by the proverbial “good problem to have.” Most demand a response, but they should be regarded as a necessary side-effect of success, and celebrated as such. If you’re not adding back feature-requests or bugs you cleaned out of the backlog, you’re not cleaning out enough. Backlogs grow without bound unless they are culled. 1000 tickets is the same as 100 tickets, except that you haven’t identified which 10% are most important. Which means

The “errors” that mean you’re doing it right by Jason Cohen on January 21, 2024 Some things appear to be mistakes, but in fact should be celebrated as the expected outcomes of great decisions. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. -Frank Wilczek, 2004 winner of Nobel for Physics Intellectually we know that failures are inevitable when we’re striving, growing, and learning. In practice we’re not always so understanding when it comes to our teams, our revenue targets, and especially when it comes to flogging ourselves . Indeed, not all errors signify progress. S

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