Getting Ready to Launch

How should teams organize work and manage risk during product launch countdown

Pre-launch engineering operates under fundamentally different constraints than normal development: mistakes carry disproportionate cost while new features add limited value. Kent Beck shares hard-won practices from shipping high-stakes systems—from setting realistic countdowns to over-communicating with your team—that trade some velocity for insurance against costly errors.

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Questions this essay answers

  • What should change about how engineers work and coordinate during product launch?
  • How do you decide which features to build and which to defer when launching?
  • Why is daily standup and pair programming more valuable pre-launch than during normal development?
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