Add daily email for 2023-12-17

Fail fast, fix fast

src/content/daily-email/2023-12-17.md

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+---
+title: >
+  Fail fast, fix fast
+pubDate: 2023-12-17
+permalink: >
+  archive/2023/12/17/fail-fast-fix-fast
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - continuous-delivery
+  - continuous-deployment
+  - deployments
+  - feature-flags
+---
+
+I recently listened to a podcast that discussed Elon Musk and quoted something like, "If 20% of attempts aren't failing, you aren't taking enough risk".
+
+In a software context, I'm not advocating that one in five production releases should fail, but I like trying new ideas and approaches.
+
+If you're releasing small changes regularly or practising continuous deployment, changes are easy to revert if there's a problem or the smaller the deployment and the more recently the code was written, then it should be easier to resolve the issue and "fix forward" instead of rolling back.
+
+Using feature flags lets you quickly turn off a feature flag while investigating and resolving the issue without needing another deployment.
+
+If you have an appropriate plan to follow in the case of an issue, that mitigates the risk and minimises the impact of a potential issue - making it quicker to resolve and restore the service.
+
+Two of the DORA metrics refer to failure rate and restoration time:
+
+* Deployment frequency
+* Lead time for changes
+* Change failure rate
+* Time to restore service
+
+Then, it depends on your organisation's tolerance for risk and what's acceptable.
+
+But, the more frequent the releases, the lower the failure rate and the quicker it will be to restore the service if there is an issue.