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by Chris Vander Mey
Shipping Greatness
Shipping Greatness
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Preface
Shipping Is Greatness
Acknowledgments
One. The Shipping Greatness Process
1. How to Build a Great Mission and Strategy
How to Find the Right Need to Meet
How to Construct a Great Mission Statement
How to Build the Right Strategy
2. How to Define a Great Product
Step 1. Write a Press Release
Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar
Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar
Step 2. Create a Living Frequently Asked Questions Document
Step 3. Draw Wireframes and Flowcharts
Step 4. Write the One-Pager and/or Build a 10-Minute Pitch
Step 5. Add API s to Your FAQ
Step 6. Write the Functional Specifications Document
Introduction
Goals and Nongoals
Use Cases or User Scenarios
Mocks or Wireframes
APIs
Capacity Plan
Dependencies
FAQ and Open Issues
Key Milestones
Step 7. Uncover Edge Cases and Get Buy-in from Your Team
Step 8. Test on Customers
Step 9. Figure Out the Basic Business Stuff: Name, Price, and Revenue
Step 10. Sell Your Completed Product Idea Upstairs
Your Product Is Ready to Build—Go Build It!
3. How to Build a Great User Experience
Understand Design Roles: UX, UI, IA , VisD, UXR … and Personas
Understand How to Evaluate Designs
The Six UX Questions
What’s the most important task the UI asks your primary persona to accomplish?
Is this the simplest solution?
Is the information organized logically?
Is the design usable and discoverable?
Are the standards consistent?
Can you reduce the number of clicks?
Understand How to Communicate with Designers
Learn How to Communicate with Pictures
Create Simple Wireframes in Omnigraffle
Make Production-Quality Mocks Quickly
4. How to Achieve Project Management Greatness on a Budget
Build and Maintain a Simple Schedule
How to Get Estimates
Track Your Bugs and Build a Bug Burndown
Managing Dependencies
5. How to Do a Great Job Testing
Insist on Test-Driven Development
Build a Test Team Around a Test Lead
Option 1: Maintain a Lower Hiring Bar, and Hire Managers
Option 2: Maintain a High Hiring Bar, and Work with Vendor Testers
Option 3: Maintain a High Hiring Bar, and Don’t Use Contractors
Review Your Test Plan and Test Cases
Automate Testing
Dogfood
How to Run a Bug Bash
Triage Bugs Properly
Use Trusted Testers
Parting Thought: Use the Entire Product as a New User
6. How to Measure Greatness
How to Collect the Right Metrics and Only the Right Metrics
The Three Classes of Metrics You Should Collect
Progress Toward Goals
Business Performance
Systems Performance
Focus on the Goal, Not the Minutiae
7. How to Have a Great Launch
Just Say No
Run a War Room
Instill a Sense of Urgency
Complete the Launch Checklist
Write the Blog Post
Roll the Software Out
Verify the Software Yourself
Respond to the Positive and Negative Effects of Your Launch
In the Case of Problems, Roll the Software Back
Handle Any Production Crises
Crisis playbook: Minutes 0–5
Crisis playbook: Minutes 0–5
Crisis playbook: Minutes 5–30
Crisis playbook: Minutes 31–N
Crisis playbook: Coping with the aftermath and writing a postmortem
Demo Your Product
Handle Press and Customers
Celebrate Your Launch!
Two. The Shipping Greatness Skills
8. How to Build a Shipping-Ready Team
How to Start a Team
Program Managers
Product Managers
Project Managers
Engineering Managers
How to Hire a Product, Program, or Engineering Manager
Hire people who are smarter than you
Look for Candidates who Understand that they are not the Boss
Look for Clear, Data-Driven, and Specific Communications
Hire Quantitatively Inclined Candidates
Hire People with Gumption
How to Acquire a Company
Intellectual Property Acquisitions
Talent Acquisitions
Customer Base Acquisitions
Defensive Acquisitions
Gotchas and Best Practices with Acquisitions
Plan to Embed Part of Your Team into their Team
Plan to Integrate the Product
Understand all the Prior Deals and Liabilities
How to Work with Offshore or Remote Teams
Don’t Rent an Engineer—Build an Engineering Team
Overcommunicate
Try Very Hard Not to Outsource Design or PM Roles
Appreciate Cultural Differences
Build Clear Requirements
Suck Up the Time Difference
Establish Great Leads
Travel a Lot or Not at All
Drink with the Remote Team
How to Join a New Team
9. How to Build Great, Shippable Technology
The First S: Servers
The Second S: Services
Drawbacks to Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs)
The Third S: Speed
The Fourth S: Scaling
How to Ask the Right Technical Questions
10. How to Be a Great Shipping Communicator
How to Write Great Email
Write Email Like a Journalist
Use the Great Delta Convention
Punctuate Your Email with Bullets as Reasons
Stop Writing Now, Because You’re Done
Try Suggestions Instead of Questions
Remember Your Audience
How to Handle the Five Types of Meetings
The Team Meeting
The Standup Meeting
The 1:1 Meeting
The Product, UX, and Engineering Design Reviews
The Brainstorming Meeting
Don’t criticize when you’re brainstorming
Say, “Yes, and…”
Prompt discussion with structure
Be clear when the brainstorming is over
How to Run a Good Meeting
Send Headline Notes Immediately
Allow Your Meeting’s Objective to Change
Stamp Out Negativity in Team Meetings; Embrace it in 1:1s
Use Tools Like Fishbone Diagrams to Solve Problems
How to Build and Give a Great Presentation
Limit Your Presentation to 15 Minutes
Always Have One, and Only One, Message
Tell a Story
Build the “Deck in One Slide”
Lead with the User Experience
Listen Like Crazy
Bonus Presentation Tips
11. How to Make Great Decisions
Postponing: “We’ll Finish It Tomorrow”
Negotiation: “OK, 10 More Minutes”
Stage 1: It’s Not About You
Stage 2: Being Fair and Using Data
Stage 3: That Data Didn’t Close the Deal…Let’s Make Up New Data!
Stage 4: Searching for Things That Are Free to Give
Stage 5: Walking Away and Thinking
Stage 6: Agreement, Paperwork, and Recriminations
Dealing with Conflict
Don’t Use “You” or “I”
Focus on the Personas, Not the People
Use Objective Measures
12. How to Stay a Great Person While Shipping
How to Balance Shipping, Quality and Impact, and Your Team
How to Handle Randomization
How to Manage Your Energy While Shipping
How to Use Escalation as a Tool, Not an Excuse
How to Eat the S#!@ Sandwich and Survive
13. That Was Great; Let’s Do It Again
A. 10 Principles of Shipping
B. Essential Artifacts Your Team Needs
C. References and Further Reading
Product Definition
Managing Management
Engineering Management
UX
Metrics
Communications
D. How to Contact Us
We’d Like to Hear from You
Safari® Books Online
About the Author
SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly
Copyright
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