Product
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🛤️ When building connected products, two things have to go right
The first is architecture, decided partly up front: network topology, the protocol between processors, how function is partitioned across boards, real-time constraints, the data model, how firmware gets updated in the field, and how operati…
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The Ability to Improve
(while this article contains many general ideas, it is written from the perspective of product development.) If you don’t continually improve, you soon lose the ability to do so … This thought came after an associate described a company tha…
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⚖️ Exercise: Build vs Borrow
In the course of product development we build and we borrow components. Some examples of each: Build: Write code (create software) Design a PCB (printed circuit board) Design a custom mechanical component Create a custom test setup Borrow…
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🛣️ The two ditches
Along roads, there is often a ditch or some undesirable obstacle on either side of the road you want to avoid. The same can be said for most of life, including product development. There are two common errors: Build it all yourself: You dr…
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📦 What is a release used for?
A release needs to happen before a product is shipped to customers for sale. Across the spectrum of the product development lifecycle, releases are used for: Generate feedback (so we know where we stand) Provide something others can build …
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🔀 What is the difference between MVP and Release First?
MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a concept from Eric Ries’ Lean Startup methodology. The idea is to build the smallest possible version of a product that lets you test a hypothesis with real users. Instead of spending months building a full-…
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❓ What is the difference between "releasing" and "shipping"?
Someone asked: “What is the difference between releasing and shipping?” Are they the same thing? In one sense they are. However, drawing a distinction here—though somewhat arbitrary—is helpful in this context. Release: Make something availa…
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🚨 Problems with not Releasing First
What is the downside of not Releasing First? Integration problems Manufacturing issues Last minute bugs appearing Lack of product fit (does not solve customer’s problem) The common theme is unforeseen problems that typically surface late …
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🔄 The release circle
As previously discussed, a release is useful and quality. What counts as a release? One way to think about this is to view the release as a circle with two attributes: What (it contains) Who (it’s for) Initially, there is not much in the …
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🪞 The illusion of project meta-data
Many tools exist for managing and tracking projects: Jira, Trello, GitHub projects/issues, Notion, Airtable, Asana, MS Project, etc. These all can be very useful. Why then does effective project tracking remain so elusive? As mentioned in t…
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🚢 What is the #1 problem in product development?
I’ll go first … a very common challenge is shipping on time and the resulting uncertainty to the business. We often add a 2-3x factor on any estimates, but sometimes even that is not enough. Shipping (delivering value) is the bottom line — …
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🛠️ Do things that don't scale
From Paul Graham’s popular essay Do Things That Don’t Scale: Over-engaging with early users is not just a permissible technique for getting growth rolling. For most successful startups it’s a necessary part of the feedback loop that makes …
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📖 When should you write the user manual?
Most of the time, teams write the user manual at the end of a product development cycle right before the Big 1.0 Release. It is one of those things that is not much fun, and teams subconsciously put it off while fighting bigger fires. But w…
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🚀 Shipping faster - what are the stakes?
What do project delays cost? The obvious thing is the loss of revenue. Time is money. However, there are other less tangible consequences: Customers lose interest. Team loses motivation. Supporting organizations (vendors/communities) may n…
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📦 What do we release?
Everything! Documentation Hardware Software Prototypes Products Lunch Engineering is fundamentally the act of creating something new. And that something new needs to be useful to someone or something. And the way we deliver “useful” is th…
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📦 What is a release?
There are two aspects of a product release: Something useful that others can experience. Produced with a high level of confidence. Everything flows into these two points.
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🔄 Platform Thinking is a habit
Platform Thinking in the context of product development has many parallels to effective habits in personal life. With personal exercise, healthy eating, getting enough sleep, and reading good books - these are difficult to start, but easy o…
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🎯 Who is Platform Thinking for?
Platform Thinking is for anyone who wants to take the friction out of creating, publishing, testing, integrating, and deploying products. The result? Value. Quality. Timeliness.
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⏳ The long-term compression timeline
Below are several timelines illustrating long-term compression comparing a product development timeline: 20 years ago Today Today with Platform Thinking The big effect of long-term compression is that negative consequences can hit much ea…
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🗜️ Long-term compression
One reality of developing products with modern technology is the compression of the short and long-term. Today, the consequences of actions come back on the timeframe of months instead of years, as it might have been ten or twenty years ago…
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🏆 What is the ultimate platform success?
The ultimate platform success is when an internal platform turns into a sellable product/service, or an open source project. Perhaps some companies succeed by starting out building a platform as a product, but the greatest platform successe…
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📝 DDPD - 🧪 TDPD - 🚀 RDPD
We have been discussing document, test, and release-driven development (doing these things first before implementing features). This ensures the product: Meets the customer’s needs (DDPD). Is quality (TDPD). Can be modified any time and re…
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📝 DDPD - Document Driven Product Development
Building on TDPD and RDPD, Document-driven product development (DDPD) offers another perspective. Ideas: Document the feature from the user’s perspective before implementing anything. Keep the documentation close to the code (same repo, et…
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🚀 RDPD - Release Driven Product Development
Yesterday we talked about Test-Driven Product Development. Release-driven product development is another perspective. Build the release/deployment mechanism before implementing the design. Automate as much of the release as possible. This …
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🧪 TDPD - Test Driven Product Development
We’re familiar with TDD (test-driven development) in the software world. Basically the idea is to create unit tests before implementing a feature. What if we extend this to systems, hardware, and even mechanical? Write end-to-end system te…
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🚀 The BIG Release vs. 🌊 a Continuous flow of Value
How do we look at a product release? As a big one-time event, where we spend heroic efforts to pull it over the finish line? Or as a continuous flow of high-quality value into the product (even before the customer ever sees it) that is main…
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🏗️ The difference between Product and Platform
Product is what you build. Platform is how you build. Most people build the first and outsource the second. After all, the product has the IP—the secret sauce—the valuable part. However, we observe in successful companies a focus on their i…
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🚧 Three things that hinder product development
Not using new tech when applicable. Doing the same work over and over again instead of automating. Lack of collaboration.
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⚙️ Three aspects of product development
Finding and leveraging existing technology. Developing some of your own technology. Mixing it together. All three are necessary.
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💰 What is the cheapest PDM tool out there?
Product Data Management (PDM) is how you manage and publish your product data. The goal is to ensure all the stakeholders share a common understanding, confusion is minimized, and quality is maintained. The simplest PDM system is to put a b…
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✨ Demos vs. Products
I’m a huge fan of demos – so is Khem. They are a very important part of product development. They are a way to ship early and get critical feedback. Demos during the course of real product development are essential. There are some challenge…