- Author
- Sean Goedecke
- Published
- 9 November 2024
- Kind
- Personal blog post of advice from experience
- Original
- www.seangoedecke.com/how-to-ship/
- Subject
- Software design
What it is
Sean Goedecke is an engineer who leads projects at large tech companies. The post explains what the author thinks leads get wrong. It ends with a summary list.
What it says
- Goedecke says the default state of a project is not to ship.
- A project counts as shipped when company leaders believe it is shipped.
- One person with end-to-end understanding usually makes a project ship.
- Leads keep leadership's trust through confidence, competence and regular updates.
- Most technical work is anticipating missed details and preparing fallback plans.
- Leads should keep at least 20% of time free early, rising to 90-100% near launch.
- Deploy early and often, and keep asking whether you can ship right now.
What evidence it gives
The post rests on the author's experience and a few illustrative cases. One example is a cache that cannot hold large documents. It gives no data or survey. It states its claims as what the author has seen.
Interests and limits
The advice comes from one engineer at big companies and fits project leads there. It defines shipping by leadership approval, which the author admits may sound circular. The linked discussions on Hacker News and lobste.rs were not read.