PaulMacready, the project manager for the GossamerCondor, the airplane that won the prize for human powered flight, gave a talk at the SecondVancouverOopsla. Please add snippets from it and how they relate to your work.
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They drew drawings of the plane only after they had won the prize. "We got paid for flying a figure eight, not drawing blueprints." I get paid for computing certain results and aiding certain human tasks. TheSourceCodeIsTheDesign, etc.
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"We acted like every problem could be solved with the simplest possible solution. The time we saved on the 98% of the problems that actually were solved allowed us to concentrate incredible resources on the other 2%." DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.
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He showed a picture of a crashed airplane. Whenever a part broke, they made that part stronger. The parts that didn't break, they made those parts lighter. DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork and RefactorMercilessly.
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Does anyone know if this is available either on tape or transcript? AlistairCockburn

The video can be purchaced from University Video Communications -- see http://www.uvc.com/videos/oo98MacCready.video.html
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Notice that the "Gossamer Condor" is a one-off, special-purpose, proof-of-concept experimental aircraft, and that its prize winning flight was made by a champion athlete.