The First Pancake is Always Spoiled
There is a Russian proverb that translates to:
"The first pancake is always spoiled."
At first glance it sounds pessimistic. But I find it far more hopeful — and far more Agile-minded — than the phrase you hear so often in IT:
"It is what it is."
The first pancake proverb carries an honest and important message: the first attempt at anything is rarely perfect. That is expected. It is not a failure — it is the price of admission. Learning happens through doing, and the first version of something exists precisely to teach us what the second version should be.
Think about what actually happens when you make pancakes. The first one almost always goes wrong. The pan is not quite at the right temperature. There is too much butter, or not enough. The batter spreads differently than you expected. You cannot know any of these things until you put the butter in the pan and pour the batter down. Only then do you start to understand.
The first pancake might be uneven. Overcooked on one side, underdone on the other. Sometimes you toss it aside. Sometimes you eat it anyway — standing at the stove, half-dressed, before anyone else is awake. But either way, it has done its job. It has taught you what the pan needs. It has calibrated your eye and your hand. It has made the next one possible.
And the next one is already cooking.
Soon the pan is at the right temperature. The butter is just right. The pancakes start coming out golden and fluffy. By the time you set a plate on the table, nobody remembers the first one. It already did its work.
Now compare that mindset to the phrase you hear in struggling IT projects:
"It is what it is."
That phrase carries a very different weight. It is not acceptance — it is resignation. It says the technical debt is too high, the damage is too great, the resources are spent, and nothing meaningful can be done except endure the consequences. It is the sound of a team that has stopped cooking altogether.
Where the first proverb says "we will do better next time," the second says "there is no next time."
In software, as in pancakes, the first version is almost never the best one. A first release teaches you things no amount of planning ever could. You learn how real users actually behave, which assumptions were wrong, where the system bends under pressure, and what you would have done differently if you had known then what you know now. That knowledge is not a consolation prize. It is the whole point.
The goal is not to get the first pancake right. The goal is to keep cooking.
The first pancake may be spoiled.
But the important thing is that we are still at the stove.