Ship fast without breaking things

Every team slows down as it grows. More people, more code, more meetings, less shipping. It doesn't have to be that way.

These essays dig into velocity, teamwork, and taming complexity — the engineering side and the people side. They're the thinking behind Scaling Fast, my book on software engineering through hypergrowth.

Essays on shipping fast

6 articles from September 2024 · show all

The Laws of Software Evolution

Manny Lehman was one of the first to notice that software is never done. It just continues to evolve forever.

The Series A inflection point

The Series A inflection point is the most fun time in a startup, if you ask me. Here's what it looks like

You can side-step a yak, they don't all need to be shaved

When yaks aren't procrastination, they might be tunnel vision. You're so focused on the right solution, you miss the good enough solution

Better is good

A small improvement that lands is better than a large improvement stuck in review

How big up-front design fails

A long design phase without shipping kills many software projects. Here's a story from production I haven't shared before.

Why software projects fail

5 common themes