Dan, a co-worker from Automattic wrote this in a p2 post today:

Measure, then act. Almost every major decision we made was in response to real-world data. Often we would be surprised and have our expectations challenged, both in terms of what was NOT possible, but also what WAS possible.

It reminds me of the old saying, “Measure twice, cut once”, and in software development, the more we measure, the more we discover.