Today I'm about to post my 23rd consecutive essay.

I joined the Ship 30 For 30 course this January by Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole. It's been an interesting challenge to undertake and I'm getting loads out of it! Elements of the writing & publishing process remind me of the work I do on software delivery teams, so that's what I'm going to share today!

Here goes!

Who is this for?

If you're writing for everybody, then you're writing for nobody.

One lesson that Dickie and Cole have been drumming into us from the get-go, is the importance of niching down. Write something that evokes feelings of "Whoa! This was written just for me!" in the reader. The same thing applies to software products. Who are you building for? What do they need? How can you help them?

Figure out that and you will be onto a winner!

Despite your best efforts the bugs will escape!

Your essays can have bugs and still deliver value.

One of the goals of Ship30 is to get feedback on what you've written. That means you have to publish and get the thing in front of people. You also can't release any old nonsense! Proofreading and editing help here. But if we spend all our time doing that, we wouldn't publish and that means no feedback. Likewise, with software, we could always keep testing without releasing in the hopes of making the product "perfect".

Find the sweet spot between too much and too little!

When will you address tech debt?

Do I focus on fixing typos in existing content or writing new content?

This one has been eye-opening! I've already noticed a TON of errors in my posts 🤦🏾‍♂️ ! I really want to go back and fix them (some of them are embarrassing as hell) and at the same time, folks are still reading them, sharing and engaging. One thing that has been a challenge on every team I've been on is paying tech debt down and delivering new things.

Using time effectively is not as easy as it looks!