The wise student of business is always looking for object lessons from the world in which we live. And, while as business professionals, we have to solve a lot of big problems, few of us has probably ever tackled a problem as big as putting a man on the moon.
Zapier software engineer Justin Deal takes a deep dive into the space race to glean important lessons that all of us can use when we’re tackling big projects. Go ahead, take that small step, it could lead to a big leap.
“Engineering (and product) goals are often notoriously vague. We want to ‘improve onboarding,’ or we want to ‘make our product easier to use.’ In an effort to make it less vague, we often make it arbitrary. ‘Double the rate of activation’ or ‘cut the setup time in half.’ While we're at it, we often make the deadlines arbitrary too and just stick ‘by the end of the year’ on the end,” writes Justin Deal in his Zapier blog.
Justin continues, “As a result, our goals aren't always exciting and tangible like getting to the moon, and they probably aren't realistic either. Chances are there are specific problems standing in the way of onboarding or making the product hard to use. Those problems may be huge, but as long as they're specific, why not solve those instead?”
Get all of Justin’s insights on what we can learn from rocket engineering over on Zapier. Trust us, it’s a great read.
Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash
