The Full Stack Leader

This guideline pops up often inside Automattic via folks like Matt, or me, on internal memos when discussing how best to balance product planning, strategy, and execution. With a bias toward action, we aim to learn more quickly by launching directly to users and customers.

Source: I first saw this message in 2015 via a tweet by Luke Wroblewski.

Luke later shared a poster version on Twitter in 2016, which I purchased for my office Zoom background (buy on Startup Vitamins).

DJ Patil, US Chief Data Scientist during the Obama administration tweeted an expanded version in 2017:

Here’s the full text from DJ’s hand-written note on White House stationery.

Dream in years
Plan in months
Evaluate in weeks
Ship daily

Prototype for 1x
Build for 10x
Engineer for 100x

What’s required to cut the timeline in half?
What needs to be done to double the impact?

DJ Patil

I love this philosophy for product strategy and execution because it puts the right balance on each activity.

Dreams take time and effort to accomplish, and a clear product vision means looking ahead enough to inspire and motivate people to join the mission.

When we don’t know an accurate launch date at the beginning, monthly plans split the work into smaller projects and tasks that’ll bring improvements out to the public quicker. This means we learn faster, measure the immediate impact of a launch, and track usage as close as possible to real-time.

Speed matters in marketing, business, and product development. Sometimes we aren’t confident the current change is the right one, yet shipping before we’re fully confident leads to a smarter set of next changes — informed by the people using the product.

Ship daily, measure weekly, and plan in months to find out what works sooner than later.

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