Going wrong, the right way.

To build great products, start by building a great team.

  1. Empower your employees
  2. Foster responsibility
  3. Let builders build
  4. Go cross-functional

Understanding Product Trade-offs

Good, cheap, fast. Pick two.

Ignorance to trade-offs will hurt your product.

Common product fallacies

Good

Cheap

- "We'll tackle the tech debt later."

- "We'll put more 'resources' on it."

- "We'll build that in V2."

Fast

- "We'll just hire an intern."

- "Can't we just add a [toggle]?"

When you understand the trade-offs, you'll realise that there is no pancea.

You will go wrong.

Just try and go wrong the right way.

What is going wrong the wrong way?

Building things on a whim that you have to support forever.

Locking yourself in to architectural decisions.

Building things that are hard to remove.

Building things that are hard to build on top of.

What is going wrong the right way?

Being experiment-driven.

  1. Have a hypothesis / goal metrics.
  2. Build enough to test it (MVP vs MLP).
  3. Don't get attached.

Easier said than done

How can we go wrong the right way?

Plan

When building an MVP, plan the whole feature, then cut it back.

Time spent planning is not wasted.

Decide on your success criteria before launching.

Go Backwards

Experiment quickly, kill ruthlessly.

People care, but not as much as you think.

Don't be afraid to stick to your vision.

A negative experiment is not a failure, celebrate them.

Have a North Star

Know where you want your product to be.

Watch out for feature creep, especially 'quick fixes'.

Make sure you're measuring the right thing.

Thank you

Going wrong, the right way.

By Will Demaine

Going wrong, the right way.

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