11 posts tagged with "product-development"

AI agents are transforming how we write code, but they are not magic. They operate within a strict constraint that many developers overlook until it bites them: the context window.

If you treat an AI session like an infinite conversation, you will eventually hit a wall where the model starts "forgetting" your initial instructions, hallucinating APIs, or reverting to bad patterns. This isn't a bug; it's a fundamental limitation of the technology. Success in agentic development requires treating context as a scarce, economic resource.

Your engineering team feels productive. Developers are coding, reviewers are reviewing, testers are testing. The flow board shows impressive activity with tasks moving through stages. Yet somehow, simple features take weeks to reach production, urgent fixes disappear into development black holes, and team velocity feels frustratingly slow despite everyone working hard.

The problem isn't lazy developers, bad code, or inadequate tools. The real culprit is something most teams can't see: invisible work queues that accumulate silently throughout your development pipeline and destroy velocity exponentially. Following Q1: The Principle of Invisible Inventory, these hidden bottlenecks are the root cause of most engineering productivity problems.

Understanding and eliminating invisible queues can transform team performance dramatically—often delivering 5-10x velocity improvements without adding resources or changing technical architecture. The key is learning to see what's hiding in plain sight.

In product development, queues are one of the most critical yet invisible factors affecting your team's performance and economic outcomes. Unlike physical queues you can see, product development queues consist of information and work items waiting to be processed—making them financially and physically invisible.

Understanding queues is essential because they represent the root cause of most economic waste in product development, following Q2: The Principle of Queueing Waste.

Product development is hypothesis testing. Every feature, user story, and strategic decision represents an assumption about value creation. The speed at which teams validate these hypotheses and pivot determines company survival in competitive markets.

Fast data collection and rapid direction changes define successful product organizations. This isn't about moving fast—it's about learning fast and making informed decisions before competitors recognize opportunities.

Most product teams unknowingly sabotage their own success. They build features without understanding the development lifecycle, hire the wrong people at critical moments, and abandon projects just before achieving stability. These mistakes aren't just inefficient—they're expensive and preventable.

Understanding the feature lifecycle reveals how strategic missteps compound into systematic failures. Teams that recognize these patterns can avoid costly mistakes and build sustainable competitive advantages.

Modern SaaS companies rarely build monolithic products. Instead, they develop product features—distinct capabilities that evolve independently while contributing to the overall platform. Managing these features effectively requires understanding their lifecycle: where each one stands in its journey from initial conception to eventual retirement.

Fast-moving agile teams face a common challenge: bugs reaching production despite having solid workflows. Even with code reviews, staging environments, and automated deployments, issues still slip through. We experienced this problem firsthand and developed a systematic 4-task approach to reduce production bugs without sacrificing velocity.

The Power of Velocity​

Velocity creates momentum that drives learning and adaptability. In product development, speed enables teams to experiment, learn, and adjust before competitors react, following E3: The Principle of Quantified Cost of Delay. This unlocks two critical advantages: faster learning cycles and precision pivoting capability.

One of the core objectives of ttoss (Terezinha Tech Operations) is to create a modular library system that enables product development teams to become agile, aligning with the Principle D12: The Second Agility Principle. In today's fast-moving development world, the ability to pivot and adapt rapidly is crucial. This principle emphasizes that it's not enough to merely decide to change direction—teams must be able to execute those changes quickly and efficiently.

In product development, initial planning is essential. We create roadmaps, set goals, and allocate resources based on the best data available at the time. However, it's critical to recognize that no plan can anticipate every problem or opportunity that lies ahead.