Y is causing Z and we should fix that. But if we stop and study the problem, we might discover that X causes the class of Y problem so we can fix the entire class, not just the instance. And perhaps W causes the class of X issue. I find my job more and more being about how far up this causality tree can I reason, how confident am I about my findings, and how far up does it make business sense to address right now, later, or ever?
Over the last 16 years, Red Bull has won 8 times, Mercedes 7 times and Mclaren 1. Which means, regardless of the change in tracks and conditions, the winners are usually the same.
So either every other team sucks at "understanding the requirements and the technical challenges" on a clinical basis or the metaphor doesn't make a lot of sense.
But my whole point was that race to race, it really isn't that much different for the teams as the comment implied and I am still kind of lost how it fits to SWE unless you're really stretching things.
Even then, most teams dont even make their own engines etc.
You’ve got the big bet to design the car between the season (which is kinda the big architectural decisions you make at the beginning of the project). Then you got the refinement over the season, which are like bug fixings and performance tweaks. There’s the parts upgrade, which are like small features added on top of the initial software.
For the next season, you either improve on the design or start from scratch depending on what you’ve learned. In the first case, It is the new version of the software. In the second, that’s the big refactor.
I remember that the reserve drivers may do a lot of simulations to provide data to the engineers.
Also in software, we can do big refactors. F1 teams are restricted to the version they’ve put in the first race. But we do have a lot of projects that were designed well enough that they’ve never changed the initial version, just build on top of it.