“As far as Frederick [The Great] was concerned, there were two major battlefield considerations—speed of march and speed of fire.” — Robert Citino

I wonder if it’s the same for information systems; if these two speeds actually determine the capability of an information system.

Speed of movement would be: how quickly can we adapt this system to emerging conditions? What’s the degree of effort involved? If you can quickly adapt an existing system with low cost to any new circumstances, that’s sounds like fully half of what you’d ask the magic lamp.

Speed of fire would be the actual speed of execution of the operations of the system. Is it fast? Is it responsive? Does it maintain that blazing speed even under load?

Could we reduce the entire desiderata of information systems to these two? I’m immediately thinking of objections: what about simplicity? But if the system is a mess then you surely cannot change it, or you cannot change it quickly, or without breaking things. If the system breaks, that also slows you down. If you need to throw away the system and write a new one, that really slows you down.

But what about quality? If the system intermittently breaks down, that slows down your users. That also reduces the actual rate of fire.

Maybe this is really the what. We want a system that we can change quickly and confidently. And a system that runs with blazing speed and doesn’t waste anyone’s time. Now, how we get there is another debate.