Seven Shipping Principles

What It Covers

37signals cofounders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain their seven shipping principles for building software at a sustainable pace, focusing on quality standards, confidence calibration, and ownership accountability.

Key Questions Answered

• •Quality threshold: Ship only good work, not minimally viable products. This standard gives teams permission to stop projects that aren't ready, even after weeks of development. Aim for 80-95% shipping rate, not 100%, to maintain proper standards.
• •Confidence calibration: Apply testing rigor proportionate to criticality. Billing systems require extensive testing and reviews, while minor features need less ceremony. Avoid shooting sparrows with cannons by using one-size-fits-all protocols that waste time on trivial features or underprotect critical ones.
• •Post-launch ownership: Developers and designers must monitor error trackers and handle support issues after shipping their work. This feedback loop prevents isolation from reality and calibrates future confidence levels. The two-week cooldown period provides time for cleanup without jumping to new projects.
• •Premise over implementation: When development becomes hard, question the underlying problem rather than perfecting a flawed solution. Step back from specific solutions like keyboard shortcuts to identify the core need, which may reveal simpler approaches using existing capabilities that better serve user goals.