[codemac]

A baseball error in fielding is when you drop a fly ball, or miss catching a pass. This happens very rarely, maybe 1-5 times per game (or succeeding ~98.5%).

This is because you're doing something easier, catching a ball. Hitting one though, is very difficult (~20-30% is where most professional players are).

He says the design task is much more difficult, and failure should be seen as overhead for part of the process (i.e. R&D process should be failing often, engineering & delivery process should be succeeding in making software ~98.5% of the time).