It is a popular term, so popular that the low hanging branches are thoroughly picked in most markets.<p>A good phrase would be "least cost development", which is really the idea behind the book "Rapid Development"<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Development-Taming-Software-Schedules/dp/1556159005" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Development-Taming-Software-Sch...</a><p>The short of it is that working to a realistic plan with the right amount and kind of planning is much more "rapid" than the typical "let's point the boat in the right direction and row for a while" strategy that is rooted in wishful thinking.<p>That said there often is some simple strategy that gets 70% of the answers right and it is correct to get that into place (at some required scale) and then think about the problem of developing a strategy that another gets 7% of the remaining right, then 3%, etc. It could be very dangerous to start from the other end of implementing strategies that add 1% or 0.1% of gain. That is, "pick the low hanging fruit" but with a plan to pick the rest of it!