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The Ebb and the Flow of Product Development

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Founders needs to move fast and get the product to market as quickly as possible, while developers feel compelled to build things properly, which tends to slow down the product release. In many contexts, tension is good. It’s actually instrumental. Think of bridges: it’s what allows them to stand. Or violins and guitars: it’s what makes them create music. However, in order to have a positive tension, you need to balance it. If you don’t, tension will eventually wreck the whole infrastructure. Bridge suspensions snap, violins cords break, and startups fail: Slow product releases lose the market, while hasty development leads to debt and entanglement. It is a difficult trade-off. I like to think of this paradox as a variation of the classic exploration-exploitation problem. The dilemma is simple: is it better to continue investing in something that worked well so far (exploit), or to try out something new and see if it works better (explore)? You can see this particular conundrum at play

The Ebb and the Flow of Product Development August 2020 In startups, there's a tension between founders and developers. Founders needs to move fast and get the product to market as quickly as possible, while developers feel compelled to build things properly , which tends to slow down the product release. In many contexts, tension is good. It’s actually instrumental. Think of bridges: it’s what allows them to stand. Or violins and guitars: it’s what makes them create music. However, in order to have a positive tension, you need to balance it. If you don’t, tension will eventually wreck the who

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