🧱 The hardest things

The magic of product development appears to live in the complex things: the clever circuit design, the brilliant algorithm, the integration of many technologies. Observation suggests the opposite. Success is grounded in doing the simple things well: discipline, communication, source control, release, update, simple and extendable data structures, user feedback, conversations, humility, consistency, documentation, transparency, tracking, automation. These simple things form the framework that allows iteration on the hard, valuable ones. A team of a few people can get by without doing the simple things well; anything beyond that becomes a challenge. None of them are beyond the reach of a reasonably competent human, yet they are often the hardest to do. Why?

The reasons are many: lack of discipline, laziness, busyness, self-importance. But the biggest one may simply be a lack of awareness. What is missing is not always apparent, and something more urgent always competes for attention. Seeing what is missing is often what we need help with.

Those who create space for the simple things end up with even more space, and with the infrastructure needed to work on the complex ones.