1/ Now that the election has been called and voter fraud dismissed, it’s time to search for other frauds. Let’s look at $TSLA Full Self Drive. About 3 weeks ago, Tesla released its Beta version to a limited audience of Tesla influencers.

2/ The influencers were supposed to flood social media with praise and testimonial videos. Instead, FSD performance was so bad that every video contained errors, many requiring driver intervention.
3/ Excuses were made. “Remember, this is only Beta”. “I’m teaching it to drive down this street”. But the reality clear to everyone was that Tesla’s Beta FSD is anything but Full Self Drive.
4/ Beta release – what does that mean? It means that the software is a candidate for production release. It means 100% of the specification has been implemented. It means only clean-ups remain.
5/ So how is it possible that FSD performs so poorly after all the hype? Certainly, there’s an element of time pressure to fulfill the Robotaxi proclamation. And similar pressure from Waymo’s competition.
6/ But timelines have never carried much weight at Tesla. What’s different this time? Why release Beta FSD when it’s clearly not ready for production?
7/ The answer is that this is as good as FSD gets. This is the best that Tesla can do with the resources (hardware and software) available. There’s no breakthrough on the horizon.
8/ There’s really no choice but to pronounce “feature complete” and book the deferred revenue.
9/ For $TSLA fans, the FSD release is disappointing. For $TSLAQ skeptics, the FSD release is worse than imagined. For Elon, the FSD release is capitulation.
10/ Hat tip to so many who have provided FSD commentary/analysis, especially @Tweetermeyer and @GretaMusk

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A common misunderstanding about Agile and “Big Design Up Front”:

There’s nothing in the Agile Manifesto or Principles that states you should never have any idea what you’re trying to build.

You’re allowed to think about a desired outcome from the beginning.

It’s not Big Design Up Front if you do in-depth research to understand the user’s problem.

It’s not BDUF if you spend detailed time learning who needs this thing and why they need it.

It’s not BDUF if you help every team member know what success looks like.

Agile is about reducing risk.

It’s not Agile if you increase risk by starting your sprints with complete ignorance.

It’s not Agile if you don’t research.

Don’t make the mistake of shutting down critical understanding by labeling it Bg Design Up Front.

It would be a mistake to assume this research should only be done by designers and researchers.

Product management and developers also need to be out with the team, conducting the research.

Shared Understanding is the key objective


Big Design Up Front is a thing to avoid.

Defining all the functionality before coding is BDUF.

Drawing every screen and every pixel is BDUF.

Promising functionality (or delivery dates) to customers before development starts is BDUF.

These things shouldn’t happen in Agile.

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