Release It!, 2nd Edition

Mechanical Advantage

“Mechanical advantage” is the multiplier on human effort that simple machines provide. With mechanical advantage, a person can move something much heavier than themselves. With a long-enough lever and a place to stand, Archimedes claimed he could move Earth itself.

The kicker about mechanical advantage is that it works for good or for ill. High leverage allows a person to make large changes with less effort. We hope that those are mostly beneficial, such as releasing new software to a fleet of ten thousand machines. Unfortunately, there are many examples of automation gone wrong. Back in ​Force Multiplier​, we saw how Reddit suffered from overeager automation. The Governor pattern discussed in ​Governor​, aims to reduce ...