Airplanes are good to learn about rigour in engineering as well as airpersonship. The quote ‘Airspeed is life and altitude is insurance’ is ingrained into every pilot’s head. Every decision during a flight can be qualified using this statement. Having the right airspeed means, it is a safe flight in the intended direction. Having enough altitude means, there is enough time to recover if something goes wrong.

I was always looking for one such statement for software craftspersonship, though we had agile manifesto, camp site rules etc there was not much that can actually showcase the excellence of a software project. When I thought about the 4 key metrics from the book Accelerate and the airpersonship side by side, an idea struck me as to why not the same statement be applicable for the software craftspersonship as well.

Airspeed can be Deployment frequency and Lead time; Altitude can be MTTR (Mean time to restore) and Change fail percentange.

Airspeed determines how fast can you bring an idea to production and how often can you do it. Altitude means how much can you go wrong and how much of a leeway do you have if things go wrong.

Why not see the 4 key metrics this way? Start looking for Airspeed and Altitude.