Two-way communication beats another shipped feature
When you're responsible for a platform, the pull is always toward shipping. Backlog is long, audiences have needs. But what audiences ask for and what they actually need rarely line up — and sometimes stepping back to refine what exists or spending time understanding actual problems matters more than the next feature.
Cleo Lant at PostHog's The hidden danger of shipping fast frames it through manufacturing's Theory of Constraints — when upstream output increases without increasing downstream capacity, the system destabilizes. In product work, that looks like invisible backlogs of features nobody noticed, widening gaps between shipping and adoption, and users who half-understand what changed. The bottleneck has shifted from building to landing.
Two things I'd pull from the recommendations:
- Treat attention as a scarce resource. Not everything you ship deserves the same announcement. A launch tier framework that distinguishes major shifts from steady improvements keeps you from flooding your audience and diluting what actually matters.
- Build discovery into the product itself. Rather than relying on changelogs or announcements that compete for attention, surface features contextually within existing workflows. Let users find new capabilities when they're already in the right mindset.
I love this closer: "Make a few things loud on purpose, and let the rest be quietly excellent."
There's a tempting instinct when AI gives you more capacity: tick off more backlog items, ship more features, clear the list. The better payoff is often spending that freed-up time engaging and understanding — staying close to the people you're building for, making sure they understand what you're doing to help them, making sure you understand what they're actually struggling with. That two-way communication compounds in ways another shipped feature won't. Let work breathe. Give people time to adapt. Focus on listening to needs and feedback.
Let AI enable you to spend the human time where it delivers the most impact.