add one thing and the system falls apart

this is about gardening and products

tl;dr — be careful to build features and products that add value you can sustain

“Where do you want these plants,” my wife said as she drew a line across the grass with a long yellow tape measure.

We’ve had these plants, little conifers in pots, for months and she desperately wants to get them in the ground.

“How are we going to water them,” I ask like a dutiful husband, fully expecting to dig the holes, plant the plants.

Let’s stop there and do the obligatory pivot to a business analogy.

In this analogy plants are products or features. The more we add (the more we plant), the more we need to water and care for and nurture and promote and spend time with.

These “little conifers in pots” are only going into the ground because we own them and my wife hates (HATES) to let a good plant go.

We do this with our Saas products, too. Features we want to see. UI changes we’ve long wanted to happen. Maybe we don’t have a reason for doing the work other than the fact that we had the idea. And it’s a precious idea, of course.

So we do the work. We build the features. We plant the plants. We add one more thing to our product and systems.

And then shit falls apart because there are just too many things we need to do now. The burden of care for “little conifers” now in the ground is bigger than we thought it would be.

This puts the whole system at risk. We have only so many resources, people, time, money to spend on each thing we build and plant.

Be careful to plant or build the things that add value AND that you can sustain.

Peter

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