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Software

Another intrinsic benefit of making changes in small steps is that it helps keep software malleable—something people tend to like because they think software should be soft. It should be easy to change. Making enhancements or fixing bugs in small pieces helps keep the system very granular. This improves the softness of the system and makes it easier to recover from mistakes, add more features, and test existing functionality.

Note that I'm not suggesting that software actually is or should be soft—that it's easy to change. Changing complex software is every bit as difficult as changing complex hardware. It's just that the difficulty manifests itself in different ways. As Steve McConnell says in his book After the Gold Rush, “the insidious ...