This is spot on: "Full-stack builders need an honest map of their range." Many builders fall in love with the 'new' product development process which enables them to build test ship within hours or days (if it's a mobile app) but it's really the blocking and tackling that has to be thought through and the range or limitations that exist. EG now more than ever UAT and QA is critical for all types of products.
I'm guilty of this too, Neil. I love what AI unlocks, but there's a real gap between what comes out after a prompt or two and what actually deserves to ship.
I'm building a new product right now. One-shotted a pretty good working version in Fable in a few hours. Since then it's been six weeks of three or four hours a day getting it to customer-ready. That's the bar I'm setting for a 0-to-1 product, and I think the bar for an established product needs to be even higher.
I'm already seeing the cost of skipping that work in products I use daily. Poorly thought-out features are proliferating in products. The pace of iteration is nice, but the slop is making it harder to trust tools I used to rely on without thinking twice.
I think many are guilty of it :), You nailed it with the gap between prompts and what is shippable. Many of the tools today are helpful at cranking out code but the Front end validations and judgment still need human judgement and product intuition, e.g. state management for apps, payment funnels etc. AI slop hurts the most when products are shipped without oversight. Even with Figma Make, Claude design etc the judgement is critical for product creators.
Also the definition of 'customer ready' has evolved as well because as you mentioned the bar is higher and customer expectations are higher than ever because the choices are plenty. The levers that have to be pulled and in a way orchestrated for Product Operators are more than ever before.
I'm with you on seeing the cost of skipping the blocking and tackling in products that are used daily. The further we go with innovation the more critical the 'boring' stuff becomes.
This is spot on: "Full-stack builders need an honest map of their range." Many builders fall in love with the 'new' product development process which enables them to build test ship within hours or days (if it's a mobile app) but it's really the blocking and tackling that has to be thought through and the range or limitations that exist. EG now more than ever UAT and QA is critical for all types of products.
I'm guilty of this too, Neil. I love what AI unlocks, but there's a real gap between what comes out after a prompt or two and what actually deserves to ship.
I'm building a new product right now. One-shotted a pretty good working version in Fable in a few hours. Since then it's been six weeks of three or four hours a day getting it to customer-ready. That's the bar I'm setting for a 0-to-1 product, and I think the bar for an established product needs to be even higher.
I'm already seeing the cost of skipping that work in products I use daily. Poorly thought-out features are proliferating in products. The pace of iteration is nice, but the slop is making it harder to trust tools I used to rely on without thinking twice.
I think many are guilty of it :), You nailed it with the gap between prompts and what is shippable. Many of the tools today are helpful at cranking out code but the Front end validations and judgment still need human judgement and product intuition, e.g. state management for apps, payment funnels etc. AI slop hurts the most when products are shipped without oversight. Even with Figma Make, Claude design etc the judgement is critical for product creators.
Also the definition of 'customer ready' has evolved as well because as you mentioned the bar is higher and customer expectations are higher than ever because the choices are plenty. The levers that have to be pulled and in a way orchestrated for Product Operators are more than ever before.
I'm with you on seeing the cost of skipping the blocking and tackling in products that are used daily. The further we go with innovation the more critical the 'boring' stuff becomes.