The idea of this pattern is to put yourself on the hook for something, say you’ll build this thing, by x date, using y technology. What this does it means you only ever need to know enough to solve the next problem. Rather than messing around with tutorials and dummy apps.
He talks about how companies take a very long time to adopt a full paradigm shift to another way of thinking or working. This is because you need three things to happen:
- Downward pressure - some kind of immovable deadline
- No other options - people will do anything before changing their way of thinking
- Information
Burn the Ships then, is about creating the first two things artificially. You give yourself a deadline, you choose to have no other option, and now you just need the information.