ship often, gather data

“our options are to delay four days, or ship tomorrow by sacrificing X

Ideally you should have at least 20% of your time free from implementation in the early stages of the project, scaling up to 90-100% in the final days.

• The best thing is a track record of having shipped in the past, if you can get it


• Project confidence (if you’re visibly worried, they will be too)


• Project competence. You want to aim for something like a NASA mission control vibe


• Communicate professionally and concisely, and don’t make them chase you for updates: post a daily or weekly thread somewher

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That means they will be trusting you for estimates, to answer technical questions, and to anticipate technical problems. Maintaining that trust should be your top priority .

First, you have to get clear on what the company is looking to get out of the project .

Shipping is a social construct within a company. Concretely, that means that a project is shipped when the important people at your company believe it is shipped.

But it’s really important that one person on the project has an end-to-end understanding of the whole thing: how it hangs together technically, and what product or business purpose it serves.