The chaos strategy is an approach to software development that extends other strategies (such as step-wise refinement), and it works with the chaos model.

The main rule is always resolve the most important issue first.

  • An issue is an incomplete programming task.
  • The most important issue is a combination of big, urgent, and robust.
    • Big issues provide value to users as working functionality.
    • Urgent issues are timely that they would otherwise hold up other work.
    • Robust issues are trusted and tested. Developers can then safely focus their attention elsewhere.
  • To resolve means to bring it to a point of stability.

The chaos strategy resembles the way that programmers work toward the end of a project, when they have a list of bugs to fix and features to create. Usually someone prioritizes the remaining tasks, and the programmers fix them one at a time. The chaos strategy states that this is the only valid way to do the work.

The chaos strategy was inspired by Go strategy.