Intel’s objectives are much clearer than ours. In our tock we build big new features like concurrent editing and our Zapier integration. In our tick, we spend time on small improvements across the board: design, code health, performance, developer happiness. Rather than interrupting feature development to start a tick cycle, we’ll alternate when we feel the time is right. For us, it’s every couple of weeks, but there’s no fixed schedule. Intel alternates cycles every 12–18 months. So inspired by Intel, we’ve applied the tick-tock model with a few changes: ![]() ![]() At Dovetail, we want to build a great product, not just a good one. This finessing is what separates good products from great ones. It’s important to step back from feature development to take stock, look at the product holistically, iterate on what you shipped based on user feedback, spend time on engineering health, and polish the design. Counter-intuitively, going so fast actually ends up making you go slow, and speed is everything when it comes to a competitive advantage in software. Developers complain about never getting a chance to refactor code or work on process improvements (like reducing build times), which eventually piles up and causes developer happiness to plummet. Designers are frustrated about all the small details and usability improvements that were cut from the MVP, and problems that were discovered after the initial feature launch are rarely prioritized above the next big feature. Features ship in their MVP state and stay there for life. Yet shipping feature after feature with no break inevitably leads to complex products, low code quality, design debt, and burnout.Ī key problem is that a design polish or engineering health phase is rarely baked into the roadmap. An entirely new thing is easier to sell than improvements to existing things. New features provide constant fuel for the marketing fire, and show momentum to customers and investors. SaaS is a competitive landscape where products are often evaluated with a feature checklist. It’s understandable why - building new features is sexy. Software companies have a tendency to go from new feature to new feature, rarely revisiting old ones. This approach had been very successful in helping Intel innovate on new architectures while setting aside dedicated time for improvement and response to user demand.įollowing this model, Intel commits to - and has successfully delivered - continued innovations in manufacturing process technology and processor microarchitecture in alternating “tick” and “tock” cycles. ![]() Intel focused on shrinking and improving an existing chip microarchitecture in the ‘tick’, and in the ‘tock’ they develop an entirely new one. The ‘tick-tock model’ was an approach used by Intel to alternate between improvement and innovation every 12–18 months.
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