Why great products need strong foundations

You've probably heard someone quote Norm Kerths' Prime Directive during a retrospective

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

In my experience, engineering teams doing their best at that time inevitably end up having to shoehorn features as requirements change or new information becomes available.

In this post, I'll discuss why great products need strong foundations.

Getting people to believe in your vision

It can be a struggle, endlessly trying to convince your organisation to believe in your ideas and vision.

In this post, I'll share how I managed to do this.

How agile helped Cambridge Assessment to scale

In 2008 the media were reporting on mistakes and delays in marking examination scripts. To ensure they never made the front page of newspapers for the wrong reasons, Cambridge Assessment decided to rethink how they electronically marked examination scripts for millions of students worldwide.

Creating a product culture at Cambridge University Press

In 2015 I was hired by Cambridge University Press to develop a web application providing digital access to over 35,000 books and 1.5 million journal articles, consolidating several smaller sites. The application would go onto have over 2 million users a day and generate £65 million in revenue per year.

It was a fantastic technical learning opportunity, but it was our culture and approach to product development that would teach me the most important lesson of all.