Shipping Greatness

Part One. The Shipping Greatness Process

ANYONE CAN SHIP SOFTWARE that works great and leaves us feeling great, but few of us actually do. More often than not, our products arrive late, miss the real customer need, or cause you and I to develop another ulcer. This is a problem. One of the reasons we have these problems is that we don’t know how to put all the pieces of the shipping puzzle together in the right way. We sometimes forget essential steps or get wrapped up in the wrong details, and we end up charging blindly ahead, depending on luck, hustle, and good will to drive the product out the door.

This approach is not sustainable or efficient, which is why the best teams at Amazon don’t work like this. It’s also not fun, which is why the best teams at Google don’t work like this either. Luckily for you, the path to shipping greatness is composed of only seven straightforward steps that any team lead can follow, and generally results in both success and fun.

Step 1 is defining the right product. You won’t achieve greatness if you do a fantastic job shipping crap. The right product is one that serves a real customer need that many customers share. Meeting this need in a unique and meaningful way is your mission, and you’ll organize all your efforts to ship around this mission. For example, your mission will inform your strategy, which is your unique approach to your market. Once you have a mission and strategy, your product will be much more clearly defined and much less likely ...