The following principles apply to how we approach the design, planning, and development of our products. Anyone familiar with Basecamp's Shape Up methodology will recognise its influence here, although we've adapted those ideas for use at Disco rather than importing them wholesale.
These principles complement our Principles of Project Delivery, which are equally applicable when we're developing products.
Unlike client work, we get to set our own timeframes and deadlines for product work (most of the time). This affords us the opportunity to be even more thoughtful, deliberate, and careful with our product development than our client development — an opportunity we must take advantage of whenever possible.
We do this by ensuring our Pitches are carefully researched, considered and reviewed before committing to them; avoiding making time-bound promises to customers; and encouraging a culture of quality in our development teams.
Everyone at Disco should be given the autonomy to help shape our products and introduce their own ideas and approaches to solving customer problems. Teams should develop a sense of ownership over our work and feel that what they're working on is truly "ours".
We do this by making Pitches open to everyone, and ensuring that teams are given a high degree of freedom when it comes to implementing the solutions proposed in a Pitch.
Product development is a marathon, not a sprint. We prefer iterative, focused improvements being delivered regularly in cycles rather than "big bang" overhauls or rewrites that risk blowing out without ever seeing the light of day.
We avoid locking in work beyond a single 6-week product cycle to focus on shipping a standalone project in that time, as well as give us the flexibility to reassess priorities each time.
Balancing product development with our day-to-day commitments to our clients isn't easy and can expose a tension between the two. We aspire to align our product development process as closely as possible to our existing delivery processes, to minimise the impact product work has on our clients and our teams.
We do this by treating the implementation of product work similarly to the implementation of client work, maintaining a healthy separation between product managers and development teams, and having clear policies around the prioritisation of product and client work.