Fred Brooks Quotes

We've been spending this kind of ramp up time from the time we started the company to now with a lot of different projects in development. What we aren't doing is saying, "We have to do this, this and this." Because the "this, this and this" might not be ready and you don't want to go and make something that's not ready.

I never had a plan. I have to say, I'm very shocked when people start a company and say, 'In five years I want to launch a perfume, or in 10 years I want to have this.' How can you know?

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.

I take any project on a month or two at a time. Meaning, I don't think too far ahead.

The thrill of not knowing what's going to happen, trained me to be prepared for anything.

I think the philosophy will continue to be what it always was; which was, let's keep throwing a bunch of things at the wall, and see what sticks.

Knowing how to deal with change effectively is a primary requirement for living successfully in perhaps the most exciting time in all of human history

It's been my habit of mind, over these years, to understand that every situation in which human beings are involved can be turned on its head. Everything someone assures me to be true might not be. Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode. Most things don't stay the way they are very long. Knowing this, however, has not made me cynical. Cynical means believing that good isn't possible; and I know for a fact that good is. I simply take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that's soon to come.

I don't need to try to push everyone out of the way and say, "This is how you do it. I actually like not knowing. I trust every lead.

Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.

All my other movies have the same process. Same approach. Same amount of changes. Everything. Things being made up on the fly. Changing things around. Firing and recasting. Constantly, constantly, in chronological sequence, not really knowing how this is going to end up. That is the only dogmatic approach I take towards everything.

Not being afraid to make changes is a valuable tool - knowing you can change back.

I like the not knowing of what the next job is.

No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers

I've never really had a certain style of music in mind that I make, or am really adamant on how something should sound, but I like the process of not knowing, of just seeing what happens and what comes out.

The decision to give an indicative date for a return is a mistake. It degrades the process. It degrades human life.

Things are always changing. Part of being successful here is being comfortable with not knowing what's going to happen.

Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you've got, and fix it as you go.

Trying to apply formal methods to all software projects is just as bad as trying to apply code-and-fix development to all projects.

I think you have to sort of accept that nobody really knows where it's going so there has to be a lot of impulsive kind of attitudes. So it's like a train that's moving and you don't quite know where it's going but you try to steer it in the best way you can realizing that it may go in different places that you had no idea.

I've always wanted to go where the work was or where I was wanted. The idea that it can be planned is one I let go of a long time ago.

A Start Up is an institution designed to thrive in the soil of extreme uncertainty

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.

There are two schools of thought. You can be basic and spend all your time on what your opponents are going to do. Or, you can be very multiple and complex, put a lot of doubt in your opponents' minds and create problems for them with the volume of things you do.

Precisely because we cannot predict the moment, we must be ready at all moments.