6 ms·

How Apple's Top Secret Product Development Process Works

148 points by FluidDjango 15y ago

FrancescoRizzi 15y ago
Very interesting to learn that they place so many barriers to cross-team communications (when they create the 'start-up'). I see this has benefits in regard to focus and secrecy but.. find it a bit counter-intuitive and possibly counter-productive: if Employee X is not in the team, he won't be able to know that he could contribute his awesome Skill Y to that team...
- jimrandomh 15y ago
  My guess is that they found in practice, employees trying to contribute to another team's project do more harm (in the form of distraction, politicking, and low-quality contributions) than good.
- ajg1977 15y ago
  Most employees think they have an awesome skill that could contribute to an exciting new project but fewer actually do. The last thing a new project needs is for staffing to be based on maneuvering and people calling in favors. If X has skills that could be of use that will already be recognized he'll be brought inside the gates when necessary. If he has some amazing insight that only happens when he learns about the project, well there's always version 2.
  - brown9-2 15y ago
    If X has skills that could be of use that will already be recognized he'll be brought inside the gates when necessary. ... in a world with perfect management.
marcusf 15y ago
It should probably be noted that 'product' in this article only means physical products, eg the iPhone, iPad, MacBook etc. It would be interesting to see how this relates to software. I might just have to buy the book.
- gdubs 15y ago
  From business week, about iOS: " In other words, should he shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod? Jobs preferred the former option, since he would then have a mobile operating system he could customize for the many gizmos then on Apple’s drawing board. Rather than pick an approach right away, however, Jobs pitted the teams against each other in a bake-off." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorcerers-apprentice-at-apple-10122011.html http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorc... So, two separate teams working simultaneously on the same problem, competitively.
  - cmelbye 15y ago
    I loved that story of how iOS came to be. He ended up making the right decision.
  - iamgilesbowkett 15y ago
    here's the all-on-one-page printer version, aka the readable version: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorcerers-apprentice-at-apple-10122011.html http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/scott-forstall-...
rtisticrahul 15y ago
Interesting post. To develop a product in total secrecy for someone the size of apple, is really a remarkable feat. Also like their focus on design first. Thats what separate their products from others.
zachrose 15y ago
> Designers are treated like royalty at Apple, where the entire product conforms to their vision. This the polar opposite of the way it works at other companies. Instead of the design being beholden to the manufacturing, finance or manufacturing departments, these all conform to the will of the design department headed by Jony Ive. Two ways to read this: 1) Designers are dictators who bend organizational BS to their will, or 2) Designers are experts who understand process and materials ridiculously well.
- r4dius 15y ago
  Why not both?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
microcentury 15y ago
The <reviews on Amazon for this book are not very positive: http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1455516074/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer?showViewpoints=1&k=Inside%20Apple%3A%20How%20America%27s%20Most%20Admired%20and%20Secretive-company%20Really%20Works%3A%20How%20Amerika%27s%20Most%20Admired%20-%20and%20Secretive%20-%20Company%20Really%20Works http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1455516074/ref=cm_cr_d... Anyone read it and care to comment?
- molecularbutter 15y ago
  Why do we need to bother reading it when half the Apple blogs are just re-writing and regurgitating the book anyway?
- yannickt 15y ago
  The reviews for the hardcover edition are mostly positive: http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Apple-Americas-Admired-Secretive-Company/product-reviews/145551215X/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Apple-Americas-Admired-Secretiv... I've read the book. I haven't read many books about Apple and I enjoyed it; hardcore Apple fans may have a different opinion. My major take away was Apple's cult of secrecy. We all "know" that Apple is secretive, but I never would have guessed the lengths they could go to prevent leaks - assuming the author's research is accurate. I don't think I would enjoy working in that kind of environment, personally.
tristan_juricek 15y ago
I see two major problems being solved here: 1. "too many cooks in the kitchen" design-by-committee crap 2. "sunk cost" pressures to deliver on investments What's interesting is how few people are involved in making decisions, given the size of the company. As an engineer, I wonder if I would feel more or less significance over my own decisions, given the constant executive feedback, and what the relationships with "the EPM/GSM mafia" feels like. My sense is that it's probably fine, given the talent level of the design group. I also wonder how many of these startups have been killed. I have to think that keeping things secret means that the execs can halt projects without reporting this to investors.
- jad 15y ago
  > I also wonder how many of these startups have been killed. I have to think that keeping things secret means that the execs can halt projects without reporting this to investors. The advantages Apple's secrecy provides can't really be understated. As you imply, it allows them to experiment with product ideas freely. They can release products only when they're ready, and not to meet some artificial deadline announced months in advance. They can (and apparently have) cut features and made changes at the last minute, again with complete freedom because they haven't told anyone what they're doing. And, obviously, they get tons of free press from the rumor mill and from their eventual "big unveil" product announcements. Consider the difference if Tim Cook casually said at, say, CES that they're shipping the iPad 3 in a couple months and it's going to have a retina display. How underwhelming would the eventual announcement be? Would it get coverage on broadcast news when it's finally announced, like iPhone and iPad announcements do now? That alone is worth millions of dollars in free marketing.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    "overstated", that is.
ThomPete 15y ago
Apples design secret is it's almost omnipotent vertical integration. Not to take anything away from Ives who is an amazing designer. But he would not be doing the things he's been doing in another company. It simply wouldn't be possible because other companies assemble components. And that is why no one is able to make better products than apple are when looked form a holistic point of view.
angersock 15y ago
Do we have any Apple alumni here to give feedback on how this process works, in practice? It reads--and maybe just to me--as a work environment as miserable as it is decadent. The amount of cross-pollination between good engineers doesn't seem that large, due to secrecy measures. The knowledge that your project could be killed off on a whim, and that you couldn't talk about it--this makes even some of the gaming sweatshops look downright friendly in comparison. (EDIT: Don't just downvote, use your words. How is the environment of extreme secrecy and compartmentalization one in which you'd wish to work?)
- bri3d 15y ago
  Extreme compartmentalization prevents the main pain points of working in a large company, in my experience. The standard problems I see with development in large corporations are these: 2+ tiers of management make decision making slow. Large numbers of involved stakeholders encourage horrific design-by-committee. And middle management knowing what other middle managers are working on encourages petty infighting over who does what or who owns the superior product. Extreme compartmentalization eliminates all 3 issues in one fell swoop. Extreme compartmentalization basically makes each product like working in a startup again, but with the financial backing of a large corporation and a substantially lower chance of losing your job if your product gets killed. It seems like a win-win to me. The secrecy aspect doesn't seem too bad to me, either: I could still pow-wow about technical issues pertaining to my product to those on my team, and I could still talk about my non-Apple projects off the job. My drive for self-promotion and e-fame isn't as strong as many coders I know, though - I don't get the urge to blog about every technical hurdle I jump. Maybe that's why I think this environment would be awesome while others don't.
- throwaway_95014 15y ago
  One reason you don't read many ex-Apple employees talking about the process is that it's complicated, and simple soundbite answers are hard to come up with. The culture of secrecy thing is greatly overplayed by the media precisely because of the visceral reaction that you display. In reality, if someone needs to know something, they can know it. If they need to reach out to someone with a specific skill set, the resource can be disclosed. The need-to-know policy is accepted and respected inside the organization because it works, but the key point is that it does work. The amount of cross-pollination between engineering teams is actually very high. There are certainly areas where access to specific projects is constrained, but in general the culture is very open. Sharing of code and team resources rather than duplicate development is the norm, as is tight cross-functional integration between teams. At any given time you may not know precisely what your peers are working on, but this is different from not knowing who they are, or being able to talk to them. I have a hard time seeing Apple-the-engineering-environment as either decadent or miserable. Apart from being a bit tight for office space and having rather too much carbon fibre in the parking garages, the company is incredibly focussed on doing the job and doing it well, which doesn't sound much like decadence. Likewise, it's hard to see what's miserable about working within Apple. The company is always doing something interesting, and it's very pragmatic about it. Projects don't get killed "on a whim", they get killed because they're a bad idea, or they don't work, or they get shelved for a year, or three, or more until the rest of the technology catches up. If you are obsessed with shipping "your thing" that might be depressing, but if you want to ship something good, knowing that you aren't going to be chained to a turkey for five years just because some suit would lose face otherwise can be very refreshing. As an engineer, working for Apple is actually pretty amazing. The company has very little of the management BS that is prevalent in other large tech companies. Most engineering decisions (how things should work) are made by engineers; many new features are the direct result of an engineer saying "what if we did this?", or "if we stack this and this and this together we could do that"; most of the engineering management team are ex-engineers and thus well-calibrated; the toolbox and scope for attacking problems in new ways are both enormous; "that would be hard" is not usually an excuse for not doing something; "that would be stupid" is usually an excuse for not doing something. Engineers, even new hires, have a very high level of personal autonomy and corresponding responsibility; your role is largely what you make of it. On a routine basis, the stuff you work on turns up in real products that people use and love. If you actually enjoy making things, that's all kinds of awesome. tl;dr: If you're considering working for Apple and the fear of being locked into a box is putting you off - that's not how it is.
funkah 15y ago
This is more detail than I have ever seen on this topic. Is anyone sure that this guy actually knows what he's talking about?
_k 15y ago
I worked for a company where lots of managers and executives wanted to have their say. Product managers, purchasing department, sales, finance and of course the top-executives. They got the product ready more or less on time. When it was introduced on the market, demand exploded and in a positive way. They made hundreds of millions of dollars. Based on that, the endless meetings, the revisions, the compromises had all been worth it, right ? Not really. The writing had been on the wall from day one. The product looked ok on the outside. However, they had been using cheap and low quality electronic components that stopped working after xxx hours. And they had problems with the grounding, due to a low-cost design decision. That made matters worse because it damaged other components. They ended up replacing the components of the circuit boards and rewriting the software. They did up to 3 retakes. It was crazy expensive. And don't think for a second that was the end of it. The customers were leasing the product and they had a purchase option after 3 years. Guess what they ended up doing ? Some no longer wanted the product and some negotiated the price down. The entire company took a huge loss, a restructuring took place, the division was shut down, people were fired, some were moved to another division, the CEO was replaced and yeah, fast forward : it's not done yet ... Lesson learned: Cross-team communication is necessary and productive, but you've got to know who to listen to.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  This is pretty key. Nobody sets out to achieve mediocrity. Nobody actually strives to put a half-assed product into the market. Mediocrity is a byproduct, not a goal, of designing to the downside: making every single decision about cutting corners, reducing costs, and mitigating risks. Most companies try their damndest to manage downside. They don't swing for the fences; they're simply trying not to strike out. Thing is, it's pretty hard to hit homeruns when you're not putting your weight into your stance and swinging hard for them. I can't carry the baseball metaphor much further without bordering on the ridiculous, but my point is that Apple defies the conventional operating procedure in consumer product development. Conventional wisdom says your primary concern is managing risk and aiming for incremental gains in market share and operating profit. Apple's strategy, by contrast, is about making fewer, bigger bets. There's bigger downside risk in such an approach, but there's also much bigger upside potential.
jacques_chester 15y ago
I bought the "book" some time ago. It's not really a book. It's a magazine article, maybe 20 pages worth of material. Basically: don't buy it. Everything of substance has already been revealed in articles like these.

148 points by FluidDjango 15y ago

Very interesting to learn that they place so many barriers to cross-team communications (when they create the 'start-up'). I see this has benefits in regard to focus and secrecy but.. find it a bit counter-intuitive and possibly counter-productive: if Employee X is not in the team, he won't be able to know that he could contribute his awesome Skill Y to that team...

jimrandomh 15y ago
My guess is that they found in practice, employees trying to contribute to another team's project do more harm (in the form of distraction, politicking, and low-quality contributions) than good.
ajg1977 15y ago
Most employees think they have an awesome skill that could contribute to an exciting new project but fewer actually do. The last thing a new project needs is for staffing to be based on maneuvering and people calling in favors. If X has skills that could be of use that will already be recognized he'll be brought inside the gates when necessary. If he has some amazing insight that only happens when he learns about the project, well there's always version 2.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  If X has skills that could be of use that will already be recognized he'll be brought inside the gates when necessary. ... in a world with perfect management.

marcusf 15y ago

It should probably be noted that 'product' in this article only means physical products, eg the iPhone, iPad, MacBook etc. It would be interesting to see how this relates to software. I might just have to buy the book.

gdubs 15y ago
From business week, about iOS: " In other words, should he shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod? Jobs preferred the former option, since he would then have a mobile operating system he could customize for the many gizmos then on Apple’s drawing board. Rather than pick an approach right away, however, Jobs pitted the teams against each other in a bake-off." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorcerers-apprentice-at-apple-10122011.html http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorc... So, two separate teams working simultaneously on the same problem, competitively.
- cmelbye 15y ago
  I loved that story of how iOS came to be. He ended up making the right decision.
- iamgilesbowkett 15y ago
  here's the all-on-one-page printer version, aka the readable version: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorcerers-apprentice-at-apple-10122011.html http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/scott-forstall-...

rtisticrahul 15y ago

Interesting post. To develop a product in total secrecy for someone the size of apple, is really a remarkable feat. Also like their focus on design first. Thats what separate their products from others.

zachrose 15y ago

> Designers are treated like royalty at Apple, where the entire product conforms to their vision. This the polar opposite of the way it works at other companies. Instead of the design being beholden to the manufacturing, finance or manufacturing departments, these all conform to the will of the design department headed by Jony Ive. Two ways to read this: 1) Designers are dictators who bend organizational BS to their will, or 2) Designers are experts who understand process and materials ridiculously well.

r4dius 15y ago
Why not both?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

microcentury 15y ago

The <reviews on Amazon for this book are not very positive: http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1455516074/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer?showViewpoints=1&k=Inside%20Apple%3A%20How%20America%27s%20Most%20Admired%20and%20Secretive-company%20Really%20Works%3A%20How%20Amerika%27s%20Most%20Admired%20-%20and%20Secretive%20-%20Company%20Really%20Works http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1455516074/ref=cm_cr_d... Anyone read it and care to comment?

molecularbutter 15y ago
Why do we need to bother reading it when half the Apple blogs are just re-writing and regurgitating the book anyway?
yannickt 15y ago
The reviews for the hardcover edition are mostly positive: http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Apple-Americas-Admired-Secretive-Company/product-reviews/145551215X/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Apple-Americas-Admired-Secretiv... I've read the book. I haven't read many books about Apple and I enjoyed it; hardcore Apple fans may have a different opinion. My major take away was Apple's cult of secrecy. We all "know" that Apple is secretive, but I never would have guessed the lengths they could go to prevent leaks - assuming the author's research is accurate. I don't think I would enjoy working in that kind of environment, personally.

tristan_juricek 15y ago

I see two major problems being solved here: 1. "too many cooks in the kitchen" design-by-committee crap 2. "sunk cost" pressures to deliver on investments What's interesting is how few people are involved in making decisions, given the size of the company. As an engineer, I wonder if I would feel more or less significance over my own decisions, given the constant executive feedback, and what the relationships with "the EPM/GSM mafia" feels like. My sense is that it's probably fine, given the talent level of the design group. I also wonder how many of these startups have been killed. I have to think that keeping things secret means that the execs can halt projects without reporting this to investors.

jad 15y ago
> I also wonder how many of these startups have been killed. I have to think that keeping things secret means that the execs can halt projects without reporting this to investors. The advantages Apple's secrecy provides can't really be understated. As you imply, it allows them to experiment with product ideas freely. They can release products only when they're ready, and not to meet some artificial deadline announced months in advance. They can (and apparently have) cut features and made changes at the last minute, again with complete freedom because they haven't told anyone what they're doing. And, obviously, they get tons of free press from the rumor mill and from their eventual "big unveil" product announcements. Consider the difference if Tim Cook casually said at, say, CES that they're shipping the iPad 3 in a couple months and it's going to have a retina display. How underwhelming would the eventual announcement be? Would it get coverage on broadcast news when it's finally announced, like iPhone and iPad announcements do now? That alone is worth millions of dollars in free marketing.
- Drbble 15y ago
  "overstated", that is.

ThomPete 15y ago

Apples design secret is it's almost omnipotent vertical integration. Not to take anything away from Ives who is an amazing designer. But he would not be doing the things he's been doing in another company. It simply wouldn't be possible because other companies assemble components. And that is why no one is able to make better products than apple are when looked form a holistic point of view.

angersock 15y ago

Do we have any Apple alumni here to give feedback on how this process works, in practice? It reads--and maybe just to me--as a work environment as miserable as it is decadent. The amount of cross-pollination between good engineers doesn't seem that large, due to secrecy measures. The knowledge that your project could be killed off on a whim, and that you couldn't talk about it--this makes even some of the gaming sweatshops look downright friendly in comparison. (EDIT: Don't just downvote, use your words. How is the environment of extreme secrecy and compartmentalization one in which you'd wish to work?)

bri3d 15y ago
Extreme compartmentalization prevents the main pain points of working in a large company, in my experience. The standard problems I see with development in large corporations are these: 2+ tiers of management make decision making slow. Large numbers of involved stakeholders encourage horrific design-by-committee. And middle management knowing what other middle managers are working on encourages petty infighting over who does what or who owns the superior product. Extreme compartmentalization eliminates all 3 issues in one fell swoop. Extreme compartmentalization basically makes each product like working in a startup again, but with the financial backing of a large corporation and a substantially lower chance of losing your job if your product gets killed. It seems like a win-win to me. The secrecy aspect doesn't seem too bad to me, either: I could still pow-wow about technical issues pertaining to my product to those on my team, and I could still talk about my non-Apple projects off the job. My drive for self-promotion and e-fame isn't as strong as many coders I know, though - I don't get the urge to blog about every technical hurdle I jump. Maybe that's why I think this environment would be awesome while others don't.
throwaway_95014 15y ago
One reason you don't read many ex-Apple employees talking about the process is that it's complicated, and simple soundbite answers are hard to come up with. The culture of secrecy thing is greatly overplayed by the media precisely because of the visceral reaction that you display. In reality, if someone needs to know something, they can know it. If they need to reach out to someone with a specific skill set, the resource can be disclosed. The need-to-know policy is accepted and respected inside the organization because it works, but the key point is that it does work. The amount of cross-pollination between engineering teams is actually very high. There are certainly areas where access to specific projects is constrained, but in general the culture is very open. Sharing of code and team resources rather than duplicate development is the norm, as is tight cross-functional integration between teams. At any given time you may not know precisely what your peers are working on, but this is different from not knowing who they are, or being able to talk to them. I have a hard time seeing Apple-the-engineering-environment as either decadent or miserable. Apart from being a bit tight for office space and having rather too much carbon fibre in the parking garages, the company is incredibly focussed on doing the job and doing it well, which doesn't sound much like decadence. Likewise, it's hard to see what's miserable about working within Apple. The company is always doing something interesting, and it's very pragmatic about it. Projects don't get killed "on a whim", they get killed because they're a bad idea, or they don't work, or they get shelved for a year, or three, or more until the rest of the technology catches up. If you are obsessed with shipping "your thing" that might be depressing, but if you want to ship something good, knowing that you aren't going to be chained to a turkey for five years just because some suit would lose face otherwise can be very refreshing. As an engineer, working for Apple is actually pretty amazing. The company has very little of the management BS that is prevalent in other large tech companies. Most engineering decisions (how things should work) are made by engineers; many new features are the direct result of an engineer saying "what if we did this?", or "if we stack this and this and this together we could do that"; most of the engineering management team are ex-engineers and thus well-calibrated; the toolbox and scope for attacking problems in new ways are both enormous; "that would be hard" is not usually an excuse for not doing something; "that would be stupid" is usually an excuse for not doing something. Engineers, even new hires, have a very high level of personal autonomy and corresponding responsibility; your role is largely what you make of it. On a routine basis, the stuff you work on turns up in real products that people use and love. If you actually enjoy making things, that's all kinds of awesome. tl;dr: If you're considering working for Apple and the fear of being locked into a box is putting you off - that's not how it is.

funkah 15y ago

This is more detail than I have ever seen on this topic. Is anyone sure that this guy actually knows what he's talking about?

_k 15y ago

I worked for a company where lots of managers and executives wanted to have their say. Product managers, purchasing department, sales, finance and of course the top-executives. They got the product ready more or less on time. When it was introduced on the market, demand exploded and in a positive way. They made hundreds of millions of dollars. Based on that, the endless meetings, the revisions, the compromises had all been worth it, right ? Not really. The writing had been on the wall from day one. The product looked ok on the outside. However, they had been using cheap and low quality electronic components that stopped working after xxx hours. And they had problems with the grounding, due to a low-cost design decision. That made matters worse because it damaged other components. They ended up replacing the components of the circuit boards and rewriting the software. They did up to 3 retakes. It was crazy expensive. And don't think for a second that was the end of it. The customers were leasing the product and they had a purchase option after 3 years. Guess what they ended up doing ? Some no longer wanted the product and some negotiated the price down. The entire company took a huge loss, a restructuring took place, the division was shut down, people were fired, some were moved to another division, the CEO was replaced and yeah, fast forward : it's not done yet ... Lesson learned: Cross-team communication is necessary and productive, but you've got to know who to listen to.

jonnathanson 15y ago
This is pretty key. Nobody sets out to achieve mediocrity. Nobody actually strives to put a half-assed product into the market. Mediocrity is a byproduct, not a goal, of designing to the downside: making every single decision about cutting corners, reducing costs, and mitigating risks. Most companies try their damndest to manage downside. They don't swing for the fences; they're simply trying not to strike out. Thing is, it's pretty hard to hit homeruns when you're not putting your weight into your stance and swinging hard for them. I can't carry the baseball metaphor much further without bordering on the ridiculous, but my point is that Apple defies the conventional operating procedure in consumer product development. Conventional wisdom says your primary concern is managing risk and aiming for incremental gains in market share and operating profit. Apple's strategy, by contrast, is about making fewer, bigger bets. There's bigger downside risk in such an approach, but there's also much bigger upside potential.

jacques_chester 15y ago

I bought the "book" some time ago. It's not really a book. It's a magazine article, maybe 20 pages worth of material. Basically: don't buy it. Everything of substance has already been revealed in articles like these.