Iterative vs linear development

I recently finished reading "Liftoff" by Eric Berger. One thing that stood out to me was how Elon Musk thought about rocket development. There are essentially two ways to design rockets: linear and iterative. The linear approach is what Lockheed and others, before SpaceX, used. They spent years defining requirements and testing subsystems before building. This made making changes slow and expensive. Elon Musk chose the iterative approach because it has a much shorter feedback loop. You jump into testing early and start learning and improving as you go, which speeds up progress and leads to better results.

The same principle applies to product development too. A team that constantly iterates keeps users engaged and excited. It also gives others reasons to give your product a second chance if it falls short the first time they try it. I experienced this with a web based animation tool called Jitter. The first time I tried it, I was not impressed and ended up not using it. I gave it another shot after seeing how much it had improved, and now I'm hooked. Compare that to a product that barely gets updated, it's the same product whether you try it in a week or a year. In short, iterative development increases the surface area for breakthroughs.

For startups and companies of any size, iteration is a superpower. It shortens feedback loops, accelerates learning, and makes the work more enjoyable internally and externally. Yes, you'll fail sometimes, but those failures lead to growth. At EVpin, this mindset drives everything we do. We're always iterating, always improving, and that's how we move faster than anyone else in the industry.