Prioritization Principles at Warp

Gamechangers vs. Showstoppers vs. Distractions

A G amechanger is a feature that is novel and has a big impact

A S howstopper is a bug or feature that brings us to parity with some existing workflow without which a user can't use Warp

Everything else is a Distraction , and we shouldn't be working on it right now

We should split our focus between Gamechangers and Showstoppers.

Right now, we have two hurdles to clear with potential users:

I can't use Warp because of X bug or missing feature

I won't use Warp because there's nothing compelling about it beyond my current terminal

If we just focus on (1) we won't have a good answer for (2). If we just focus on (2), we will have too many people who can't use the product at all. We need a balance of gamechangers and showstoppers .

We should always prioritize performance . Helping engineers work faster is a key part of our value prop.

We should prioritize features and fixes that are relatively high-impact compared to their effort .

We should weigh the product and technical risk of features. Other things equal, less-risky features are better than more risky ones .

Product-risk: risk that the feature won't be broadly or deeply useful

Technical-risk: risk that we won't be able to build the feature well, or at all.

We should actively seek to assess the risk before dismissing it for being too big or too small.

For product risk, we should talk to our users (face-to-face if possible). For technical risk, we should prototype.

We should always ask who is this feature for ? In general we want to build features that solve acute pain points for smaller groups of users rather than lesser pain points for larger groups of users. But solving a large pain point for a lot of users is best of all if we can do it.

Above all, be pragmatic . These are principles, not rules.

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