>I feel like software is ultimately about humans organizing complex activities
Organizations are much like software: embodiment of domain knowledge. It needs to be codified, and if you're not actively cultivating it locally, you're outsourcing the one thing that matters: learning.
It's a 100% in the interest of incumbent players to divulge ready-made pretenses of universal solutions. It precludes competition.
Another saying "work smart not hard", i.e. you can save a lot of time by thinking things through before jumping into executing.
Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything. In a gun fight... You need to take your time in a hurry. -- Wyatt Earp
Another one is Blue Origin's motto: "Gradatim Ferociter", which translates to "Step by step, ferociously".
The famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden used to say "be quick but never hurry".
My mom has a saying in Arabic that roughly translates to "he who rushes is delayed"
The German press agency (DPA) has (had?) a saying/motto:
> Be first, but first be right.
Another one for the collection: vísteme despacio que tengo prisa.
I like the Spanish saying "Vísteme despacio, que tengo prisa": "dress me up slowly, since I'm in a rush".
Another phrase with similar meaning (and interesting history) is "festina lente" ("make haste slowly," in Latin). I named my company after it (:
It's certainly an ancient concept. I feel like software is ultimately about humans organizing complex activities, and humans haven't changed that much in the past few millennia, even if the activities have gotten more complex and abstract.
I feel like the ones-size-fits-all approach of trying to say approach X or Y is superior (eg: scrum vs. kanban vs. waterfall, etc) is totally off the mark. Different sorts of work require different sorts of effort. Creative and full-of-unknowns work is different from assembly-line sort of work is different from maintenance work, etc.
On a meta level, I think part of the "slow is smooth..." philosophy is to take a deep breath at the beginning and think about what sorts of approaches are going to be best suited for the tasks at hand. As opposed to some mindless "scrum is in, so we'll do that for everything". Or "everyone is using NoSQL now, so we should too" or any number of other cargo-cult-y behaviors.
Festina Lente!