Go fly a kite

Building the first bridge across the Niagara Falls involved flying a kite to get a string to the other side. The string was used to pull a rope, which pulled a cable, which eventually led to a bridge across the stretch of unnavigable water. Matt Sheppard applies this pattern to software, establishing a thread through a proposed system, building just enough infrastructure to execute the simplest, lightest-weight operation possible, and iterating from there.