Ship to Production as Soon as You Can
Production. I love production. Production is where I want to be. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where value is generated. I am highly driven to get to production. I’m going to explain this concept in the context of digital technology but let me make a few non-technical analogies first.
Vacation
You decide to take a vacation in Costa Rica. You book your resort and air travel. You pack your bags. You drive to the airport, park, go through security, wait at the gate, board the plane, and fly. You arrive, go through customs, taxi to the resort, check-in, unpack, and then relax and enjoy.
Every single step in that process is a means to an end. Most people don’t stop and smell the roses in the TSA security line. You just have to get through it. We try to make it as painless and quick as possible. Sure, you could drive all the way to Costa Rica, but that would seem ridiculous to most.
Education
After high school, I went to college. I loved college. It was a lot of fun. But after a year, I couldn’t imagine spending another three years doing the same thing, waiting for real life to start. I wanted to get my career and adult life going as soon as possible. After one more semester, I started my career during the day and finished my education at night.
That gave me the added benefit of taking what I learned every night and applying it the next day on the job. That was cool.
Technology
I work with a lot of technology teams in various stages of product development. I’m most heavily involved in the early stage. I help with the initial strategy, business alignment, business case, and initial funding for a product team. Then I set them loose.
Then, I patiently wait as the product teams form, get their rhythm down, design, develop, and test their products. Then, I eagerly wait as they deploy their first MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) to production.
How long does that take?
In some cases, months. In other cases, years. In all cases, longer than I wish it did. I call this stage pre-value. It’s pre-value because we are spending money, and working hard, but not generating any value. We’re building a product, but no one is using it. This is the most uncomfortable part of the process for me. I feel like I’m standing in the TSA security line. I understand why it is necessary, but I just want to get through it.
What happens next?
Once we get the MVP to production, the fun really starts. We get to learn. We see which experiments worked, and which ones didn’t. We get to fix the problems that we didn’t know existed before launch. We get to act on the feedback of real live actual production users. In most cases, teams that are in this mode can act relatively fast. They can go from idea to production in a matter of days or weeks instead of months or years.
It’s a little bit like my educational journey. I learned the minimum amount I needed to start my career. Then I continued learning while I worked in my profession. By the time my peers finished their 4-year degrees, I already had 2.5 years of professional experience under my belt. All along the way, I tested the theories I learned, and I saw what worked and what didn’t.
The leadership lesson
I’m in the business of finding ways to make MVPs smaller and pre-value phases shorter. I don’t expect my teams to get their pre-value product perfect before launch. It should be high-quality, but it won’t be perfect.
If you think your product is too big and important to take this approach, consider Elon Musk’s approach with Twitter. He has a team of thousands of engineers and a product worth $44B.
Elon has a way with words and has certainly been turning heads with his approach at Twitter. Also consider this statement from Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.com, a sizable Silicon Valley tech company.
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