Execution Is a Dash, Planning and Project Management Is a Triathlon
Move fast and break things. Unless you break things, you aren’t moving fast enough.
Mark Zuckerberg’s adage gets thrown around all too quickly. There’s some truth to it—if you’re never breaking things, maybe you’re not taking enough risks. And without risk, there’s no innovation, and no profits.
But aspiring to break things can make us bad engineers. It leads to half-baked products, brittle code, and software that falls apart with the next update. Execution requires speed, but speed alone isn’t enough.
The Sprint Versus the Triathlon
Execution is a sprint—a dash to the next release, milestone, or customer. Speed matters.
But product development is an endurance sport. It is not about version 1. Version 1 is often the easiest product you will create. No customer-reported bugs. No requests for enhancements yet.
Like a triathlon, product development requires balance. A triathlon is about balancing your energy between three disciplines: swimming, cycling, and running.
Planning and managing a project works the same way. You balance between various aspects of the product: adding new features, maintaining the product and supporting existing customers, and evolving the development and deployment infrastructure. Optimizing one area while neglecting another will eventually hurt your product’s overall performance. Planning is finding that balance.
Training for the Long Game
It is important to include rest days and tapering periods in your endurance training schedule. The same is true in product development. Take time to reflect, conduct a retrospective, or allow the team to recharge between releases or sprints. Technical debt is like muscle fatigue - ignore it too long and you’ll face bigger problems.
Long endurance races demand preparation for changing conditions. Triathletes train in various weather scenarios—from choppy waters to sudden downpours while on the bike. They adapt.
The same is true for product development. The team needs to be ready and flexible to adapt to changing market conditions or competitor moves.
The product lifecycle shares many parallels with triathlon competition: equipment maintenance (infrastructure upkeep), understanding different terrain (market segments), nutrition plans (resource allocation), and mental training (team resilience).
While developers often feel they’re sprinting, product and project managers should approach building products like triathlon coaches—with an eye on both immediate performance and long-term endurance.