Lunch at Don Giovanni's with Phillip. He's amped. We haven't even seen our waiter and he's already cleared the table and is scribbling furiously on the white paper table cloth.
"See, we needed to speed up our release cycle which is, of course, insane, but we figured out a way! We call it Train releases. We've got four releases going at the same time and a train leaves the station every month. If a feature is ready to go, it gets on the train and if it's not, it waits for the next train. We've already released two trains in six weeks!"
I nod watching the scribbles become increasingly incoherent. I'd buy Phillip a nice glass of Chianti to take the edge off, but he's a Mormon, so I try the truth.
"Phil, you're screwed twice. First, you're screwed because you're going to need, at least, twice the staff to qualify these ever increasing releases and you're a start-up. You've got one QA guy and if he hasn't blown a fuse yet, just wait a month. Second, and most important, you've got no downtime. You've got no time to design because everyone is going to be panicked about which train they're supposed to be riding."
"Phil, in order to create, you've got to think."
