value
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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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📦 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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💡 A Simple Example
The Release First mindset starts with how you handle reasonably complex information (a procedure, technical details, etc). There are two approaches: Email or message the information. Put it in Git and send a link or PR. The first is trans…
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📦 More definitions of a release
A release must be: reliable, useful, repeatable, and predictable. This delivers outcomes of: quality, value, timeliness, and consistency. The second group is the outcome we want, the first group is what we focus on to get there.
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🎬 Is a Demo the same as a Release?
Some development teams have a weekly demo where they might show what they are working on to others in the company or the customer, which is a great idea as it encourages hitting milestones and early feedback. However, is the “demo” just ano…
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⏱️ How do you find time for higher value tasks?
Do you (and by extension your organization) find yourself mired in minutia and struggling to find time for higher value tasks? What is the solution? You can hire more people to do the lower-value stuff (a perfectly valid approach). You can …
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⚖️ Reliability, Cost, and Value
Everything has a cost and value to the customer. How much value does the customer put on 99.999% reliability vs the value of other features they need? If one system out of a thousand fails every 3 years (0.033% failure rate per year), what …
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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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🤝 A release is what unifies Engineering and Business
Some feedback on yesterday’s post (What is a release): What specifically flows into the two points? Value? Effort? Perhaps a better way to phrase this is these are the two points of focus that unify the development team with the rest of t…
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🥄 The beauty of human creativity
In this age of machine-generated perfection, something is still deeply rewarding about grabbing a stick of wood and making something by hand. This past Christmas, with the help of kids and grandkids, we made a few mixing spoons for gifts. S…
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🥉 Good, fast, cheap - choose three
A familiar phrase states: “Good, fast, cheap. Choose two.” This is similar to the development triangle. Which states that everything is a tradeoff. However, improving all three becomes possible when doing things differently. That is the …
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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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📈 Scale vs. Value
As scale increases (# of people, # of technologies, # of products, # of teams, life cycle of product, experience, amount of knowledge, etc.), what does the value produced look like? Metcalfe’s law states that the financial value or influen…
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👤 Who is our "customer"?
Your “customer” is someone who derives value and uses what you produce. Customers are both internal and external to your organization. While it is good to focus on the flow of primary business value to the end-customer (that is what pays th…
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📈 How does your product value increase after the initial sale?
How does your product increase in value after the sale? Software/Firmware/Cloud updates. Software is soft for a reason – it is meant to be changed, improved. And sometimes we install “apps” to add new functionality. And with this improvemen…