Deploy a Hello World in week one

Conversation on March 1:

— When is your release?

— March 15.

Conversation on April 1:

— When is your release?

— April 15.

— But it was supposed to be March 15 🤔

— When we tried to release, we discovered that our solution could not be deployed to the required platform. Now we’re rebuilding it.

I see two to three cases like this every year.

Engineers are naturally wired to focus on the code — and honestly, that's exactly what's expected of them. So they optimize, refactor, polish... and from my experience, they often skip the one thing that would have saved them months.

A simple Hello World deployed in week one.🤔

It sounds obvious when you say it out loud. From what I've seen though, it quietly forces the team to shift how they think about "done." Because a product, unlike a project, has no final done — it's an endless process of improving and making it valuable.

Project mindset: "When will this be finished and deployed?"

Product mindset: "How do we deploy more often to keep improving this?" 🚀

The earlier you taste that in practice, the less time you might lose rebuilding things that were never going to deploy anyway. 🎯

How does your team think about deployment — as a finish line or as a rhythm?