One of the interesting ever-present slogans in certain software cultures is “Move fast and break things.” The idea is: as you are trying to build something new, it’s harder to make progress than think about potential problems that might occur; so TRY IT and SEE IF IT WORKS.
…And if something breaks, you fix it!
It’s often associated with ‘agile’ software methodologies but ironically Agile also advocates a host of techniques for reducing the ‘break things’ part. It’s more of a philosophy about What Matters you often hear in software startups.
The thing is, the slogan itself doesn’t specify what is being broken. That matters to a degree that CANNOT be overstated.
If ‘moving fast’ means occasionally breaking the newsletter signup page, that might be an easy win!
…But if “move fast” means that you ship, say, fraud detection software that generates false-positives 2x more frequently for black customers than white customers, what’s suffering isn’t your software, it’s PEOPLE.
If “move fast” means testing large language models as a substitute for human grief counseling, even if “you learn a lot” in the process, what is at risk of being broken is peoples’ lives, not your software.