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from the canyon edge
Bread knife . We'll get to the slicing part later, but get yourself an awesome bread knife. I'm a big fan of the Miyabi series , but if that's too pricey ($300), here's a great knife for $30.
The Spring launch of the Apex 20a platform on March 26, 2020, marks the beginning of an exciting, new era of product development at Apex Clearing . We have adopted a number of product management best practices from the software industry and adapted them to address some of the unique challenges within financial services and software-as-a-service. In the interest of transparency, I’m pleased to share our new processes, what we’ve learned along the way, and where we’re headed next.
Ubuntu, OpenStack, and Kubernetes all share similar, predictable, time-based release cycles. Ubuntu has released every April and October, since October of 2004 – that's 32 major software platform releases, on time, every time, over 16 years. Ubuntu has set the bar for velocity, quality, and predictability in the open source world. OpenStack’s development processes have largely mirrored Ubuntu’s, with many of the early project leaders having been ex-Ubuntu engineers and managers. OpenStack, too, has utilized a 6-month development cycle, since 2010, now on its 20 th release. Kubernetes came along in 2014, and sought to increase the pace a bit, with quarterly release cycles. Kubernetes is a little bit looser with dates than Ubuntu or OpenStack, but has generally cranked out 4 quality releases per year, over the last 6 years. I’ve been involved in each of these projects at some level, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed coaching a number of early stage start-ups on how to apply these principles to their product development methodologies.
When I arrived at Apex in September 2019 to lead the product organization, I inherited an excellent team of product and project managers, peered with high-quality engineering teams. Products and projects, however, were managed pretty asynchronously, hence release timelines and new feature commitments were unpredictable. Of course, I had seen this before at a number of the start-ups that I’ve advised, so the model was quite familiar.
Our cycles are named for the year in which it will complete (launch), and with a letter as an iterator. In 2020, we launch Apex 20a (March), Apex 20b (July), and Apex 20c (November), and looking forward to 2021, we should see Apex 21a (March), Apex 21b (July), and Apex 21c (November). The “c” cycles are a few extra weeks, to account for the holidays near the end of the year. These aren’t really “versions”, as Apex is more like “software as a service”, rather than “delivered software”, like Ubuntu, OpenStack, and Kubernetes. Also, conversationally, we're referring to the cycles with the season -- so Apex 20a is our "Spring" launch, 20b will be our "Summer" launch, and 20c will be our "Autumn" launch.
The Planning Summit signals the end of the PRD-writing period, during which product managers worked closely with their engineering counterparts, digesting all of those product requests and priorities, and turn those into product requirements written in RFC2119 -style language (must, should, may, etc.). At the end of that process, each Product Manager and their technical counterpart lead an hour-long session with their plan for the next cycle, including fairly detailed commitments as to the major changes we should expect to be delivered. Our Planning Summit is about a dozen, hour long sessions, spread over three days in the same week. We exit the Planning Summit with clear product and engineering consensus on work commitments across the product portfolio, for the upcoming cycle. This marks the beginning of the development portion of the cycle.
Apex 20a launched on March 31, 2020, as our first release using the methodologies described above. Apex clients can find detailed release notes in the Apex Developer Portal . This cycle began with a Prioritization Summit in October 2019, a Planning Summit in November 2019, and a Mid-cycle Summit in January 2020. This cycle involved 17-weeks of development.
Our work on Apex 20b is already well underway, having held our Prioritization Summit in February 2020, and we’re holding our Planning Summit this week (March 2020). Our Mid-cycle Summit will be held in May 2020, and we will launch Apex 20b in July 2020.
Apex 20a is the first of many coordinated product launch cycles our customers will experience. We’ve adapted many of the best practices utilized by the open source software industry as well as Silicon Valley, and those practices are helping us work more effectively with our tech-savvy client base. Apex will have 3 launches in 2020 (20a, 20b, 20c), and at least 3 launches in 2021. By openly sharing our product stages and delivering a consistent, predictable, and reliable schedule, there are now ample opportunities for both customer input and detailed review and oversight by our leaders, which culminates in secure and stable products for our industry. We’re delighted at the engagement thus far, and really look forward to more collaboration in the future.
▼ 2021 (1)
► 2020 (3)
dustinkirkland commented on issue dustinkirkland/hollywood#58 - 8/20/2021
dustinkirkland commented on issue dustinkirkland/petname#1 - 7/30/2021
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