Burndown is the framework that Drift uses to employ the first principles of Responsive Development.

If we were to build a new version of the Drift customer dashboard – lets call it “Dashboard 2.0” – we ’d have two options: We could ship the entire thing at once and take two weeks to do that, or… We could ship five different incremental updates to customers in two-day bursts.

When you look at how easy it has become for competitors in a crowded market to quickly copy one another, you realize how vital speed truly is.

On one end, we have “Quick ship” releases, which are small, highly incremental just-in-time releases. On the other end , we have “Big Bang” releases. These are giant, long undertakings that attempt to have every detail thought through and perfectly executed.

We measure customer adoption, usage, & retention on a daily basis. We believe that an iterative model that evolves quickly based on feedback wins.

What are the first principles of Responsive Development? It’s flexible: It’s based on principles, not rules. Rules are binding. Principles favor progress and forward momentum. It’s customer-driven: Always gather first-hand feedback, not second-hand feedback. Get engineers and designers talking directly to customers.

At the top of each list, there is a HIGH LEVEL card that explains exactly what is going to happen with that release, written in the format of a Jobs To Be Done statement. The HIGH LEVEL card also contains a link to the Sketch file that has all of the designs for that release.

Product management’s role is to gather vast amounts of customer feedback and great examples of how others solve the challenges that customers face today.

It’s focused: Iterations should be focused, self-contained, and have as few dependencies as possible.