I think that is plausible, and I think the factors you mention are definitely a virtue of the MCB approach. A further one is that even if we were to produce too few, the ones we did produce would still result in marginal gains. I also agree that most of the cost will be at the beginning; even more so if it is done correctly.
But I point out the error in estimating how many boats will be needed is completely independent of the error in estimating the timeline and costs for setting up production; we aren’t at liberty to assume they will even approximately balance out. I think it is reasonable to infer that the longer the delay until operations start, the more boats will be needed to achieve the goal. This means the risk is lopsided primarily on the side of costs increasing; there’s no particular likelihood of things being much cheaper or faster than expected, like we expected production to start in five years and it mysteriously happened in three.
These are all solvable problems, mind; the core of my criticism is that there are specific issues that arise from the bigness of challenges alone, and that we need to account for them deliberately. This is not done in baseline cost or time estimates, and rarely done even among people who are experienced in tackling big challenges, so we aren’t at liberty to assume that we can hand it off to experienced practitioners and they will handle it.
I think that is plausible, and I think the factors you mention are definitely a virtue of the MCB approach. A further one is that even if we were to produce too few, the ones we did produce would still result in marginal gains. I also agree that most of the cost will be at the beginning; even more so if it is done correctly.
But I point out the error in estimating how many boats will be needed is completely independent of the error in estimating the timeline and costs for setting up production; we aren’t at liberty to assume they will even approximately balance out. I think it is reasonable to infer that the longer the delay until operations start, the more boats will be needed to achieve the goal. This means the risk is lopsided primarily on the side of costs increasing; there’s no particular likelihood of things being much cheaper or faster than expected, like we expected production to start in five years and it mysteriously happened in three.
These are all solvable problems, mind; the core of my criticism is that there are specific issues that arise from the bigness of challenges alone, and that we need to account for them deliberately. This is not done in baseline cost or time estimates, and rarely done even among people who are experienced in tackling big challenges, so we aren’t at liberty to assume that we can hand it off to experienced practitioners and they will handle it.