Positive Feedback Loops

A lot of euro games or RPGs use something akin to "action points". Things you spend to take action, bigger tasks take more action points, smaller tasks take less. When you run out of action points your turn is over. In these games one of the better early game strategies is often to use your action points to buy more action point production, with more action points in the next turn you'll be able to do a little more, and you'll buy more action points and so on and so on.

This is a positive feedback loop, you're spending action points to generate more action points in subsequent turns, the sooner you can make those investments the bigger the payoff over the life of the game.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment are a similar form of positive feedback loop.

You make the investment early in the project, even if there's lots you could do without it because as time goes on that early investment will pay off many times over.