好的设计不是免费的。它必须是您不断投资的东西，这样小问题才不会累积成大问题。幸运的是，好的设计最终会收回成本，而且比您想象的要早。
始终如一地运用战略方法并将投资视为今天而不是明天要做的事情至关重要。当您陷入危机时，很容易推迟清理，直到危机结束之后。但是，这是一个湿滑的斜坡。在当前紧缩之后，几乎肯定会再出现一次。一旦开始延迟设计改进，就很容易使延迟永久化，并使您的文化陷入战术方法中。您等待解决设计问题的时间越长，问题就会变得越大；解决方案变得更加令人生畏，这使得轻松推迟解决方案变得更加容易。最有效的方法是，每位工程师都对良好的设计进行连续的少量投资。
Good design doesn’t come for free. It has to be something you invest in continually, so that small problems don’t accumulate into big ones. Fortunately, good design eventually pays for itself, and sooner than you might think.
It’s crucial to be consistent in applying the strategic approach and to think of investment as something to do today, not tomorrow. When you get in a crunch it will be tempting to put off cleanups until after the crunch is over. However, this is a slippery slope; after the current crunch there will almost certainly be another one, and another after that. Once you start delaying design improvements, it’s easy for the delays to become permanent and for your culture to slip into the tactical approach. The longer you wait to address design problems, the bigger they become; the solutions become more intimidating, which makes it easy to put them off even more. The most effective approach is one where every engineer makes continuous small investments in good design.