Consider a small team adding refunds to an online shop. First, they implement a narrow path—submit request, validate, persist—with tests mirroring real cases, and a stubbed payment gateway to make it work. Next, they extract domain objects, name states explicitly, and simplify error handling to make it right, shrinking cognitive load. Finally, load tests reveal a bottleneck in inventory lookups; a read-through cache and batched queries make it fast. Because each step built on the last, the feature ships with confidence, clarity, and speed—exactly as Beck’s sequence intends. [...]
