Elon calls it "recursive" delivery
- Mary Iqbal
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Elon said something that stopped me in my tracks on Saturday. He said:
In a single building, we can create a mask, make the chip, test the chip, make another mask, and have a fast recursive loop for improving the chip design.... I can’t emphasize enough the importance of being able to make it, to test it and then make and then change the design, do another one, and have that in a single building.
Sounds a lot like Scrum, doesn't it?
Recursive Delivery
Elon Musk gave a speech in Austin, Texas this weekend announcing Terafab - a huge chip-making effort. It's exciting, it's world changing, and the way he is going about this is exciting as well.
He's talking about cross-functional teams and incremental delivery. Elon calls it recursive delivery: build, test, fix, repeat - fast, all in one place. No handoffs.
Agile coaches have been saying this forever.
Agile calls this cross-functional teams
Agile coaches have hammered on cross-functional teams and incremental delivery, but we struggle to explain it.
Elon made it simple: just get everyone together and iterate like crazy.
This is the heart of the value that Scrum brings to the table.
Get people with different skills together on the same team.
Give them a clear goal.
And let them continuously improve what they are delivering.
Bring the people together
Too many organizations don't get this. At all. They think that we are still in the days of Henry Ford and specialization. But that doesn't work for complex problems. In fact, that approach is the opposite of helpful. We are doing creative work, so we need to work together so we can have different viewpoints on the same team. You wouldn't expect to paint a great work of art using specialized teams and you can't expect to create new products that way either.
Tell the people what you want
Don't be afraid to dream big. In another speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas in January 2026, Elon said that the purpose of SpaceX was to “make Star Trek real.” Talk about bringing a complex project down to a simple dream.
You'd be surprised how much your team can really deliver if you just tell them what you really want.
It happens all the time: stakeholders think their goals are too hard to deliver. So, they ask for something else. And often what they really wanted was totally doable. For example, some years back one of my stakeholders really wanted a page that was personalized. They wanted the page to update based on the individual viewer's interests. The stakeholder didn't think this was possible (although even then it was pretty easy out of the box functionality) so they asked for this really elaborate page design that would allow the customer to easily dig into their interests. What they really wanted would have been easier and cheaper.
So go on. Shoot for the stars.
Let 'em cook
They deliver something. Then improve it. And improve it again. That's what Elon calls recursive delivery, but Scrum calls it incremental delivery. And they can do this because they don't have to submit a ticket to a far distant team and then worry about what was lost in translation. They don't have to request the leader's permission to get the resources that they need. They have the resources. They are working together. They try it and then try it again. And that's the way a team with different skills working together can deliver. They can deliver more frequently because they are working together.
And because they delivery more frequently, they can learn what works and what doesn't.
But wait, there's more
Cross-functional teams and incremental delivery are just the beginning of wisdom. With Scrum we have to (gasp) TALK to each other.
We plan what we are going to accomplish every Sprint at Sprint Planning.
We keep each other up to date. Every day. At the Daily Scrum.
And then we show what was done at the Sprint Review.
And, finally, we talk about how we can improve the way we work together at the Sprint Retrospective.
The Scrum events keep the team focused on value delivery and sure that we are working as a team. Because it's not enough for us to be in the same building if we are not working together closely as a team. The Scrum events take a group of people and gives them the space to be a team.
Bring recursive delivery to your team
When it comes to complex problems, Scrum really is the best thing out there. It's all about bringing people to together, giving them a clear goal, and encouraging them to continuously improve.
Don't take it from me. Take it from Elon:
I think that our recursive improvement ... is probably an order of magnitude better than anything else in the world.”
Yep. It is an order of magnitude better than an any other approach. Incremental delivery is all about continuous improvement - that's why we do it.
Elon believes in cross-functional teams, and they can work for you too. Learn about Scrum and learn how to deliver value.
