Let's be Fwends #131:

Exit Criteria over Deadlines

“It's nice to be nice.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Welcome to edition 131 of Let's be Fwends. Today, I'd like to share the concept of Exit Criteria with you, and how they are superior to time-based deadlines.

Then, there's some really interesting information about the practicality of renewable energy and a map of sunken ships.

If you're ever in need to find a great illustration of the principle of repetition and how it is related to success, I've got just the right video for you.

Finally, we round this edition out with a handy app (if you're a Lego enthusiast).

Exit Criteria are superior to Deadlines

Deadlines. Part and parcel of work. "I want this report until Friday". "This paper is due end of April." Framing work by the time we expect it to be completed is so common, we hardly even notice how broken this is.

A report is useful when it contains the data and the insights that are needed for making a decision. A paper is done when it is completed.

Setting deadlines by which you expect a certain outcome to materialise is an artefact of planning, and is diametral to running learning experiments.

When we set up an experiment, we don't know what we will learn, so it's impossible to tell the time by which we have learned it.

A better approach is to set Exit Criteria that allow us to determine when we can stop our efforts. Either because we have reached our goals, or because they turned out to be unattainable (with the resources we are willing to commit to).

Requesting a report until Friday is one thing. Asking someone to come up with three promising ideas for improvements to build on is something else.

Renewable Energies are Here

One of the main objections against renewable energy sources is their inherent volatility. Critics say that without the moderating effects of "always on" power sources like nuclear plants or thermal power stations, renewable energy sources are too unreliable to be practical: Modern power grids cannot operate on these sources alone.

Optimists say that although it is true that renewable energy sources are harder to control, this is an issue that can be solved by technology and smart grid management.

And it looks like the optimists are right: California, a notoriously power-hungry region, managed to satisfy its energy needs solely with renewable sources for 30 days.

You can use this as an example the next time someone tells you we will always need nuclear fuel, oil, gas or coal to have the electrical energy we need.

Interactive Map of the Sunken Ships of World War 2

More than half a million people died on the oceans during World War 2. Over 15.00 ships were sunk. This interactive map lets you view them and reveals some interesting patterns.

One More Try

Mastery is the culmination point of iteration. Success happens after many failures. The Agile mantra, visualised by skateboard artists.

Create an Inventory of Your Lego-Bricks

Brickit is a cool app that scans your unsorted heap of lego bricks, creates an inventory out of them, and suggests some fun little models you can build out of them.

That's it for this edition of Let's be Fwends, as always: Thanks for reading, you're a rock star. 🎸

Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash