Don't be afraid to fail, advises Freakonomics guest blogger Tim Harford:
Ideally, I’d like to see many more complex problems approached with a willingness to experiment. The process has three components: first, try lots of different things; second, make sure the experiments are at a small scale so that when things go wrong, it’s not a catastrophe; and third, make sure there’s a reliable way to tell the difference between success and failure.
Of course, Harford is talking about the economy. But if the occasional failure is good for something as complex as the economy, is there any reason the same principle can't apply to IT architecture?
If IT architecture is about making sure IT serves business needs, and if experimentation and failure are components of the process of business innovation, it only follows that IT architecture must accomodate both experimentation and failure, just as it must provide the means to set things right as quickly as possible when the organization occasionally ends up in the ditch on the side of the road to innovation.
Read the original article: Why Is Failure a Sign of a Healthy Economy?