Engineering trade-offs are inevitable in any product development process. You have to balance competing factors such as speed, quality, cost, scope, and user satisfaction. How do you make informed and effective decisions that align with your goals and constraints? Here are some tips and best practices to help you manage engineering trade-offs.
Before you start making trade-offs, you need to have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve and why. What are the main objectives and success criteria of your product? What are the most important features and functionalities for your users? What are the non-negotiable requirements and standards that you have to meet? By defining your priorities, you can focus on the essential aspects of your product and avoid unnecessary complexity and waste.
It's an natural inclination to focus on the 'Product', this should not be the soul focus! Understanding the landscape of where your product plays is an extremely important area. What is the market size, compititors, geographical differences and something that's often forgot, timeline to develop your product. There is no point bring something to market in five years when your comsumers needs are peaking in two years.
Start by defining clear product objectives and goals. What are you trying to achieve with the product? This could be increasing market share, improving user experience, or maximizing profitability.
Product Quality(since we sell them) should not be hindered by something like "cost benefit analysis", but should still adhere to context. Example: Higher vehicle quality than product > Why drive a ferrari to go the store, when you can achieve the same results(albeit a bit slower) using a family van/car, or better yet a bike. - Priority Time? Go ahead Ferrari - Priority Gas? A little bit of time? Go family van/car - Priority Cost? Go bike.. Context is King, optimize it, yes my example is extreme, but you get the idea.
Design principles are general guidelines that help you shape your product architecture and design decisions. They can help you simplify your problem, reduce technical debt, improve performance, and enhance usability. For example, some common design principles are modularity, scalability, reusability, testability, and maintainability. You can use design principles to evaluate different options and trade-offs and choose the ones that best fit your product vision and values.
In my opinion the above says a lot but nothing of value Design principles should viewed from overall level. Firstly what are the steps to go from where you are now to product release. Secondly under each of these, what is the aim of each steps and who type of collaborators and decision makers. Start building road map to follow and amend as required throughout your journey
Engineering trade-offs are not made in isolation. They affect the whole product team and the stakeholders. Therefore, you need to communicate and collaborate with them throughout the process. You need to share your assumptions, rationale, alternatives, and implications of your trade-offs. You need to solicit feedback, input, and approval from the relevant parties. You need to document your trade-offs and update your plans and specifications accordingly. By communicating and collaborating, you can ensure alignment, transparency, and accountability for your trade-offs.
The rationale behind engineer trade-offs like strength and flexibility, is almost the same in all fascets of life. > STRONG Muscles - strength training - cardio activities (sprints not marathons) - flexibility training - explosiveness training (Plyometrics) ** When you exclusively do strength training you lose some flexibility, and in time, muscles get stiffer. ** When you exclusively do marathons you lose some core + more upper body mass, and in time you're gonna be left with bare minimum upper body mass(albeit lean). ** When you exclusively do flexibility exercises, you lose explosiveness, and etc... Bottomline: Get the best of all worlds by engineering the trade-offs(seeing the product as a whole) not just as a summation of parts.
This is extremely important. In reality nothing goes to plan. Documenting and communicating positives, negatives and more critically changes in priorities is essential to avoid misalignment between various functional and stakeholders.
Communicate trade-offs transparently to stakeholders, including customers if necessary. Explain the rationale behind decisions and how they benefit the overall product.
Engineering trade-offs are not final or permanent. They are based on the best available information and assumptions at the time. However, as the product evolves and the context changes, you may need to revisit and revise your trade-offs. Therefore, you need to experiment and iterate on your product and validate your trade-offs with real data and user feedback. You need to measure the impact and outcome of your trade-offs and learn from your successes and failures. You need to adapt and adjust your trade-offs as needed to optimize your product.
Consider an iterative approach. You may start with a minimum viable product (MVP) to test hypotheses and gather feedback before making larger trade-off decisions.
Engineering trade-offs are not binary or absolute. They are not either-or choices, but rather spectrum or continuum choices. You don't have to sacrifice one factor completely for another, but rather find a reasonable balance that works for your product. For example, you don't have to choose between speed and quality, but rather find a suitable level of quality that meets your standards and deadlines. You don't have to choose between cost and scope, but rather find a feasible scope that fits your budget and delivers value. You don't have to choose between user satisfaction and technical feasibility, but rather find a desirable solution that meets user needs and technical constraints. By balancing trade-offs, you can achieve a harmonious and holistic product.
Recognize that trade-offs are inevitable in product development. You may need to trade off features, quality, cost, or time-to-market. Identify what aspects are non-negotiable and where trade-offs are possible.