shipping greatness - chris vander mey defining the right product serve a real customer need in a unique meaningful way unique approach defining it clearly and with detail press release, living faq, functional spec, more align engineering team, engage managers/investors design ux from user out, iterate proj management track deliverables, prioritize, scope test bug triage, decisions set up tracking metrics based on definition of success launch plan marketing and pr, launch checklist, triage *building a mission and strategy mission - solve a customer problem strategy - unique approach to the problem and market segment finding the right problem look for a big problem many users share, work from users back real, big, shared constructing mission statement inspires provides organizational/directional principle short how to find strategy paragraph(s) about how your product is more attractive than competitors unique, compares to competitors why are you better who what where when why *defining a product write a press release name, date, for who, what problem, how, why create a living FAQ wireframes or flowcharts one-page document or 10 minute slides name, segment info, problem and value, solution description and why better than competitors, when ships and major milestones, team profile add APIs to your faq high level to understand interaction with other teams write functional specs (big, details about how and why things work) intro (mission and strat) the one page doc goals, nongoals prioritized why use cases or user stories prioritized levels: need for demo, ship, nice, meh mocks or wireframes apis capacity plan rough est of how many users etc buffer and communicate it fallback case dependencies what and why faq and open issues key milestones any important dates or planned steps review design and eng stuff, get team buyin edge cases test concept on customers name, price, forecast pitch to higher up *simple revenue model total market size in terms of buyers assumption about growth over time reduce to addressable market guess at number of users through marketing guess at conversion add any other channels like guesses about virality calculate revenue *building a great ux personas, scenarios, user research questions to ask about designs what is the most important task in the interface is this the simplest solution is this arranged logically is it usable and discoverable is it consistent with expectations can things be reduced *simple project management build a simple schedule prioritized tasks + eng estimates buffer track bugs, burndown, zero date find/fix manage dependencies carefully *how to test insist on test driven dev build a test team review test plan derived from product requirements area, severity, preconditions, tasks, postconditions automate testing dogfood triage grade frequency, severity, cost to fix meet to review new bugs make it harder to accept new bugs as launch blocking *measuring 5 key aspects of good metrics inexpensive reliable and repeatable measured frequently actionable customer focused 3 key kinds progress toward goals business performance system performance try not to optimize too locally, be mindful of the overall goal *launching just say no, war room, urgency, launch checklist, blog, launch, verify, respond to launch design for failure *building a team overview of a few different job roles things to look for when hiring things to look for when acquiring a company working with remote teams *building tech use a hosting solution instead of your own servers services speed, caching scaling *communication be crisp single clear message lead email with most important thing followed by why templates like increase thing by y from x_0 to x_1 try suggestions instead of questions remember the audience overview of meeting types *running meetings headline notes immediately allow objective to change no negativity in team meetings tools for problem solving *presentations short clear message story user experience listen