Shipping Greatness: Practical lessons on building and launching outstanding software, learned on the job at Google and Amazon

APIs can be very useful but can also backfire because the engineers you work with may feel that APIs are their territory. Be careful — feel out the team first. If they understand that the idea behind you writing APIs is so that high-level management can agree on which teams will own which data, and which interfaces must be maintained as part of you

The goal of adding APIs to your product description is to explain how your team will interface with other teams. APIs can also explain how external developers might work with your systems and what kind of data you’ll store.

THE USER EXPERIENCE IS not just what your product looks like, it’s how it works, too.

the best way to discover edge cases is by “taking a slow walk through the functionality.” The slow walk is a great way to approach the problem because you really need to take time to reflect creatively on ways that users will break your software or use it in a manner other than you intended. As you take this slow walk, write down all the potential

I honestly believe Eric Schmidt both espoused and lived to this principle. I heard him say, “Thank you for ignoring me; that’s why we hired you.” Sadly, he said this about someone else — I didn’t have the guts to ignore Eric because he was really much, much smarter than I.

If you’ve uncovered a big problem that many users share, you’ve completed the most important step of your product definition process. More important, you’re on the road to helping a lot of people in a meaningful way! These criteria — real, big, and shared — probably seem obvious, but more often than not, teams ignore them. They also form the corner

When all the major work on a project is done and the team is almost exclusively fixing bugs, I stop using the schedule. Instead, I use the bug list and a bug burndown chart.

Risk is the enemy of shipping.

THE NEXT STEP OF the shipping process is making your product idea understandable and specific.

This strategy accomplishes what I need it to accomplish. It speaks to the type of product IMDb is going to offer and why the company is uniquely positioned to provide this service. It speaks to competition and how IMDb will be different, and justifies why IMDb should target a specific segment. It’s brief and to the point. It’s not excessively speci