Huh I never thought about this before — There are 2 completely different kinds of iteration in any kind of work. There’s rework loops wired to internal standards and expectations and rework loops wired to external tests and risks. Each loop you have to choose which kind it is
-
-
Critical and/or niche darlings otoh tend to be low E/I. In fact I’d say low E/I ratio that “works” initially does so by being born fully formed and therefore appealing mainly to an OCD type of consumer who won’t tolerate loose ends and frayed edges as an iterative work evolves.
Show this thread -
Low E/I vs high E/I. This is the choice between the curse of nerd fandom that might limit future broad appeal vs the curse of shoestring budget bootstrapping which risks sucking too much to ever get off the ground.
Show this thread -
Another point, internal and external loops don’t just differ in speed and locus of feedback. They differ in purpose. Internal feedback is about deciding what’s worth doing, external feedback is about figuring out if it works in an environment. QA is secondary in both.
Show this thread -
QA (quality assurance) is actually a trivial cost/risk trade off. Both you and your reader can detect typos for examples. Whether you do an extra copy editing pass or let the first few readers find them and complain/point out is just a cost/risk decision.
Show this thread -
Setting aside objective harmful risks (anything from consumers spending non-refundable money on bug-ridden things to planes crashing) QA is actually a function of the king of consumers you want and how foolish you’re willing to look.
Show this thread -
I am fairly willing to look foolish and tend to solve for readers who will be forgiving towards rough edges in the interest of getting to sillier, more speculative places. If you can’t get past a misplaced comma or misattributed quote, you’ll hate my schtick anyway
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
I was surprised to learn that
@GreatDismal essentially rewrites his novels on every pass - which would be an extreme of internal iteration but certainly avoids the pitfalls of needing to flow consistent changes back through the work.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
There’s an interesting parallel from your high E/I framing to the Lean Startup approach for building companies... get an MVP out there and iterate with customer feedback till you get the sort of product-market fit that will enable popular success
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.