apply-early-intervention

Apply Early Intervention

Tackle difficult problems while they are still small — because the cost to resolve a problem increases nonlinearly with delay, and the signals that make early intervention possible are available long before the crisis makes it unavoidable.

Why This Is Best Practice

道德经 Chapter 63 (Laozi, ~6th–4th century BC):

图难于其易，为大于其细。天下难事，必作于易；天下大事，必作于细。

"Tackle the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great while it is still small. All difficult things in the world begin as easy ones; all great things begin as small ones."

Why best: Laozi's observation is causal, not motivational: the window in which a problem is easy to solve exists before it is visible as a crisis. Once a problem becomes obviously critical, the easy solution is no longer available — only expensive, disruptive, high-risk interventions remain. The principle is not "fix problems early because it's virtuous" but "fix them early because the cheap path closes as the problem grows."

IBM Systems Sciences Institute defect research (1981): The foundational empirical study of intervention cost vs. delay in software development. Finding: the cost to fix a defect identified in the requirements phase is $1; the same defect identified in production costs $100. The nonlinear cost curve — not a linear increase — is the key finding. A 100× cost multiplier is not recoverable through better late-stage execution; it changes the economics of intervention entirely. Replicated in multiple studies; forms the foundation of the "cost of quality" framework used at IBM, Boeing, and throughout software and manufacturing.

DevSecOps "shift left" (standard practice, 2010s–present): The industry-wide movement to move security and quality testing earlier in the software development pipeline. The finding: security vulnerabilities found during code review cost 6× less to fix than those found in testing; vulnerabilities found in production cost 30× more than those found in development. Adopted as standard practice at Google, Netflix, Stripe, Amazon, and throughout the FAANG-tier engineering ecosystem. NIST Software Security in Supply Chains report (2022) explicitly mandates shift-left as a supply chain security control.