Start by Situation

This guide is organized by topic in the navigation on the left. If you know what you're looking for, go there directly.

Pick the situation that sounds most like yours and we'll set you off at the right chapter — from there, each chapter charts you onward. Or open the whole map and explore.

Pick up where you left off above — or start a new route: choose the situation that sounds most like where you are now and we'll set you off at the right chapter. You can also open the whole map and explore.

If you arrived with a specific problem and aren't sure where to start, pick the line below that most sounds like your situation. Each one points at a small set of chapters that will get you the most useful context fastest.

What brings you here?

Pick the situation that sounds most like yours and we'll set you off at the right chapter — from there, each chapter charts you onward.

Click any prompt below to see the chapters most relevant to it.

I'm starting a new software product and want to do it well.

Begin with:

• Software Is Not Manufactured
• Product Thinking vs Project Thinking
• The Build Trap
• Monolith First
• Product Ownership

My team can't agree on what to build, or we keep building the wrong things.

Read:

• The Build Trap
• Product Ownership
• Exploring the Problem Space
• Shared Language and Operational Clarity

Someone keeps saying we have 'a lot of tech debt' and using it to justify rewrites or delays.

Read:

• Technical Debt
• Architecture Is About Change
• Maintainability

I've inherited a legacy system and don't know where to start.

Read:

• Architecture Is About Change
• Maintainability
• Technical Debt
• Expand-Contract Migrations

We're about to launch something significant and want to avoid breaking ourselves doing it.

Read:

• Launch Is the Beginning
• Deployment Strategies
• Feature Flags
• Observability

Production is on fire, or has been recently, and we don't want a repeat.

Read:

• Incident Response
• Observability
• Fix Forward
• Support and Triage

Engineering and product don't trust each other.

Read:

• Product Ownership
• Collaborative Engineering
• Systems Thinking

Stakeholders are spending serious money on software without understanding what they're buying.

Read:

• Software Is Economics
• Total Cost of Ownership
• Estimates Are Forecasts
• Ethics of Spending Client Money
• Perfection Is Irrational

We're trying to decide between SaaS, custom-built, off-the-shelf, or white-label software.

Read:

• Owning vs Licensing
• Total Cost of Ownership
• Software Is Economics

We ship features but have no idea whether anyone uses them.

Read:

• Instrumentation and Product Analytics
• User Behavior Testing
• A/B Testing
• UI/UX Is Not Decoration

I'm here to read straight through.

Start at the top of the navigation and work down. The book is structured so each section builds on the previous ones, but every chapter is meant to stand on its own.

Not sure where to begin?

Start with Why This Guide Exists, then browse the navigation on the left.