Unless I misunderstood your question and you’re asking whether a writer should give up quickly, well each person has to decide that for himself. Still, I would venture to say, the time a writer has invested in his/her story, s/he isn’t going to give up that easily.

As an Agility Consultant in the computer technology field, I make a lot of money ripping out old, dead, moldy and downright money-sucking project processes from developmental groups and applying updated industry-standard methodologies. Agile developmental methodologies work in my industry very well, otherwise, nobody would make a living “installing” them.

Can these agile concepts translate to writers? That’s a trick question. At its core, “fail faster” is simply the acknowledgement that mistakes will be made and that the sooner you make them, the better off everyone will be.

But, and this is a mega-big-but, (heh, heh) agility processes are not failure based. Agility development is an advancement in fields that rely on creativity. Creative processes are organic and come from people. Creative people, by and large, need flexibility to produce creative output. That is the core of being Agile.

Failing faster is just a side benefit.

Your musing on fail faster talks about industry but then you ask your question about writers and that is the trick question. Writers on the traditional publishing track are already subscribing to a process. Fail faster has no process attribute other than the query pass/fail process. Once “in”, they don’t have a choice.

Independent authors, on the other hand, are an Army of One even when they act as hiring agents for editing, cover art, etc. They are already agile. While I’ve advised writers on failing faster, what I’ve tried to instill in them is the concept of learning by getting product in front of readers.

Could the publishing industry apply agile methodologies and produce better books for more readers faster? Absolutely, but agility has to start at the very top. To become agile you have to change the processes, programs and people. The top of the food chain must be the first convert, because the people who won’t change have to be let go.