A six-step loop for building product — and why being wrong is the point

Engineer Boris Cherny lays out the repeatable framework he applies to nearly every problem and product: understand what you know, gather what you don’t, define the problem, choose a clear and simple approach, set a goal, and act with urgency toward it. The key is that the loop is iterative. New information forces you back to redefining the problem, approach, and goal, and for hard problems that cycle repeats many times. He argues the resulting churn only feels chaotic if you mistake it for failure — updating your plan when the data changes is the work, not a detour from it.

Most breakdowns he sees cluster in two steps: failing to define the problem sharply, and failing to pick an approach that’s genuinely simple. Both produce bloated plans and fuzzy success criteria, and the person writing the plan is usually the last to notice — which is why he pushes for fast, real-time feedback in both directions, and says he wants the same critique aimed back at his own method.

The framing is deliberately humble: Cherny says he’s open to being told the meta-process itself is flawed, and that he actively enjoys being wrong because each correction sharpens the problem definition and shortens the path to a real solution. It’s a compact statement of an experimentation-driven engineering culture, pitched at teams building product in an era where AI keeps shifting the ground under any fixed plan.