What did you undesign?

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In the video below Eric Berger from Ars Technica asks a question on how Elon Musk and the team at SpaceX build an iteration of Starship within 4/5 months and how they’d go so fast. Here is the transcript for those who want to read instead of listening:

Eric Berger: How did you go so fast?

Elon Musk:

I have this mantra: if the schedule is long, it’s wrong. If it’s tight, it’s right.

Basically just have recursive improvement on a schedule.

Say with every feedback loop: Did this make it go faster? If it did not, we are going to need to fix it. If the design takes a long time to build, it’s the wrong design. This is the fundamental thing. The tendency is to complicate things.

The best process is no process. It weights nothing, it costs nothing. Can’t go wrong. As obvious as that sounds. The best part is no part .

The thing I’m most impressed with when I have the design meetings at SpaceX is: what did you undesign?

What did you undesign in your projects recently? Or are you in a scenario where you are only adding more and more stuff?

Undesigning is the best thing.

Just delete it.

That’s the best thing.



Enjoy the video.