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In case you missed it, I wrote a thing about product development methods. I juxtapose Amazon’s, Apple’s, and Pixar’s against The Lean Startup, and conclude that any divergence from lean startup is worth paying attention to, mostly because it’s ... well, it’s not the orthodoxy.

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Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Mar 23, 2021

This week's Commonplace post is about product development methods. Specifically, Amazon's 'working backwards' process — and what it, alongside Apple's 'creative selection' process, and Pixar's 'braintrust', tells us about new product development. commoncog.com/blog/product-d

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I don't see Lean Startup, Amazon, and Apple's approach as diverging—they all iterate on cheap artifacts to get feedback; features, docs, prototypes. In startups, shipping a feature takes days. In big tech, the same feature could take months, thus the need for smaller artifacts.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Replying to

@eugeneyan

I think the big diff here is in audience selection. All three companies take care in the people who evaluate the cheap artefacts. (I didn't mention it, but Bryar and Carr say that people get better at evaluating PR/FAQs over time, and they mentor others).

2:35 AM · Mar 24, 2021Twitter Web App

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I think the Lean Startup approach does too. The most important person evaluates the artifact—the customer.

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Oh, so I went back and read The Lean Startup for this post, and it's really "find a set of users, any users, early adopter users." Whereas Apple/Pixar is more "if you make a stupid comment, you have bad taste, and you'll never be invited back to review stuff!"

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