Iterate or die

Fast iteration cycles are the primary competitive advantage in software development. Using analogies from military tactics and stochastic gradient descent, the argument is made that a small team deploying code multiple times per day will outperform a team 10x larger that deploys every few months. Big-bang waterfall projects — whether at banks, government agencies, or even modern tech companies — fail because assumptions go unvalidated for months or years. Agile is criticized as 'mini-waterfall' when it doesn't create genuine feedback loops. Key antipatterns include compensating slow cycles with more hiring and attributing failure to insufficient planning rather than the futility of planning itself.