How product teams should set deadlines • Hacker News Board

Re: How product teams should set deadlines

#41

Post by thunderbong » Tue, May 03, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #39

jdlshore wrote: post #7

The article describes a predictive project-management approach, and it's the same misguided focus on deadlines you hear from people with a predictive mindset. But an adaptive approach is so much more effective. The adaptive approach: Products should ship as soon as they're ready for market, not according to some deadline. To ship sooner, they should be sliced into pieces that have compelling individual value. Each pi…

The problem with the adaptive model is in creating the culture inside the company to work with it. It might be easy if you are a software company, but for those of us where software is only a part of what the company does, it can be really difficult to get that mindset. Marketing want to know when the release is going to happen, the MD wants to get to market with this new thing that will do x for y (but won't really)…

Also, this might work for a standalone product. But if the product integrates with other systems the client is already using, it becomes extremely difficult to ship something of which only certain parts work.

In this case, the client, usually and in my opinion, correctly, expects the product to fulfill all of the functionality planned for.

Re: How product teams should set deadlines

#42

Post by knightofmars » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

meerita wrote: post #22

+12 years PM here. Good teams know how to estimate. Estimations are that, estimations and not solid predictions. Deadlines should be blurry enough to have the idea when business can have something, and never fixed dates. The reason is simple: people get sick, people find new corner cases, problems, technical difficulties and day-to-day operations will sabotage (indirectly) the excution to deliver that new project.

Exactly! Estimates are useful and volatility is real.

Re: How product teams should set deadlines

#43

Post by jdlshore » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #20

jdlshore wrote: post #7

The article describes a predictive project-management approach, and it's the same misguided focus on deadlines you hear from people with a predictive mindset. But an adaptive approach is so much more effective. The adaptive approach: Products should ship as soon as they're ready for market, not according to some deadline. To ship sooner, they should be sliced into pieces that have compelling individual value. Each pi…

The adaptive approach: Products should ship as soon as they're ready for market, not according to some deadline. To ship sooner, they should be sliced into pieces that have compelling individual value. Each piece is shipped when ready. And those pieces ("valuable increments") should be sliced into even more pieces that could be shipped sooner in case new business opportunities come along. I used to wholeheartedly agr…

I agree that half-assery is a failure mode of the adaptive approach. I don't think it's an inherent problem with the approach, though, just a common mistake people make. You're supposed to split your product into pieces with compelling value. But often people misinterpret ideas such as "minimum viable product" as splitting the product into pieces with minimum value. And that's a mistake.

(Minimum viable product, of course, not being about products at all, but about product-market fit and testing your ideas as soon as possible using low-fidelity experiments.)

You can have a coherent user experience and still use an adaptive approach. I think Alphabet's failures have more to do with Alphabet's culture, particularly around rewards and promotions, and perhaps a disdain for non-engineering skills, rather than taking an adaptive approach.

Re: How product teams should set deadlines

#44

Post by roeles » Tue, May 03, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #25

jseban wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great way to deliver cake! I wonder if you can slice software in the same way though..

Ironically you can't agile a cake, because the whole thing has to go in the oven at once for a defined time period. Or maybe you could; if management can't or won't specify the cake in advance, say whether it should be round or square until ten minutes before the deadline, you could just bake a pile of cupcakes and squash them into the tin.

> Ironically you can't agile a cake, because the whole thing has to go in the oven at once for a defined time period.

There are of course delicious exceptions. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spekkoek

Re: How product teams should set deadlines

#45

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

The issues with scheduling IMO highlight a deeper topic: culture. Specifically, are you product led or sales led company?

Throughout my product career, arbitrary dates have come from sales committing to a random date to close a deal (which also leads to other problems when Sales starts acting as Product, coming up with new "features".)