Further edits in ch. 2

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@@ -10,13 +10,15 @@ One of the best pieces of advice I received about comparing ourselves to others
 
 ## The lure of the post-mortem
 
-There's a tradition in some programming projects (especially game development projects where there is a clear end when the product ships) of doing a post-mortem on the project. What the post-mortem does is allow the developers of a project to state what went right and what didn't go right. The better ones tend to be frank accounts of the successes and failures of a project. 
+There's a tradition in some programming projects (especially in game development projects where there is a clear end when the product ships) of doing a post-mortem on the project. What the post-mortem does is allow the developers of a project to state what went right and what didn't go right. The better ones tend to be frank accounts of the successes and failures of a project. 
 
 The post-mortem can be a fascinating look into the development of a project. I've found myself reading a lot of these looking for insights into the development process.
 
-But there's a subtle trap in the post-mortem: they're a recollection of events from a vantage point of a successful (or unsuccessful) project. They're from a vantage point of someone who has made a thing, and it was successful enough that you are reading about that project's ups and downs. They're written from a vantage point where the success of the project is a foregone conclusion (or the vantage point where the project is was important enough to document why it was a failure, or didn't live up to the expectations of those involved). It can give you a false-sense that what you're working on is not as important as the things that other people are working on. But we don't know the importance of our project in real-time. It may never see the light of day or it might be something that changes the world. We can't know that while we're working on it (though we can have a sense of whether or not we _feel_ our work is important or not).
+But there's a subtle trap in the post-mortem: they're a recollection of events from a vantage point of a successful (or unsuccessful) project. They're a recollection of someone who has made a thing, and it was successful enough that you are reading about that project's ups and downs. They're written from a perspective where the success of the project is a foregone conclusion (or from a perspective where the project was important enough to document why it was a failure, or why it didn't live up to the expectations of those involved). It can lead you to believe that what you're working on is not as important as the things that other people are working on. But we don't know the importance of our project in real-time. Even the folks in the post-mortem didn't know if their project will work or be successful as they're working on it. Our projects may never see the light of day or it might be something that changes the world. We can't know the value of what we're working on while we're working on it (though we can have a sense of whether or not we _feel_ our work is important or not).
 
-There's also the tendency in post-mortems to have a bit of hindsight about them. Things that were clear and definite in the moment might not make as much sense with the benefit of future-understanding. There's also selective memory where something might not be remembered with as much clarity when looking at it from the vantage point of a completed (or failed) project. Statements like "we knew this wouldn't have worked" from the vantage point of hindsight may have been "we wanted to try to see if this would not work. We were convinced it wouldn't work but we tried anyhow". Consider anyone writing about their past as an unreliable narrator. True, they may be the most experienced and knowledgeable narrator we have, but they are generally not an outside perspective on whatever they were creating.
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+There's also the tendency in a post-mortem to have a sense of hindsight about them. Things that were clear and definite in the moment might not make as much sense with the benefit of future-understanding. There's also selective memory where something might not be remembered with as much clarity when looking at it from the vantage point of a completed (or failed) project. Statements like "we knew this wouldn't have worked" from the vantage point of hindsight may have been "we wanted to try to see if this would not work. We were convinced it wouldn't work but we tried anyhow". Consider anyone writing about their past as an unreliable narrator. True, they may be the most experienced and knowledgeable narrator we have, but they are generally not an outside perspective on whatever they were creating.
 
 There's nothing wrong with reading a post-mortem about a project - we can learn a great deal about how a project is run (or shouldn't be run) and what pitfalls may befall us if we go down a similar path. But understand that you're reading one account (whether by one person or one team of people). They have the vantage point of someone deep in the conflict. You're looking at their recollections of tactics, not the overall strategy brought them to the place.