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2 min read Podcast

New project: Product Fundamentals

I've written, recorded, and produced a podcast about the history of software development, called Product Fundamentals. Check it out!
Cover image for the Product Fundamentals podcast.

I'm excited to share the launch of a new project: the Product Fundamentals podcast!

I've been a voracious consumer of educational podcasts since I discovered the medium nearly ten years ago, and I've long felt the itch to make something of my own, but I wasn't sure what I could really bring of value.

I spent an Indeed 2022 hackathon speccing out a potential podcast series on "what PMs should know about engineering," inspired by own experience evolving from a PM without any formal engineering training, to being technical product manager for some of Indeed's most sophisticated backend systems. Many of my fellow product managers expressed interest, but the combination of time and cohost didn't quite come together and I set it aside.

In March 2023, I decided to poke at the idea some more, reading up on the early days of software development. Originally, I just wanted to make sure I could give a clean answer to the question "What is Waterfall development?"

I quickly found myself drawn down a dozen different historical rabbit holes, from how NATO defined the term software engineering to the role of a management consultant who fled the Nazis in creating the system of OKRs.

When you stop and interrogate the way we build software, it turns out it's this fascinating mix of high-stakes deliberate design, and totally improvised organic mess. There are ideas that trace back literal centuries, and there are critical technologies that didn't exist months ago. How else could we end up with Gantt charts, kaizen, standups, a 68-word Manifesto, and $400 processors that can do trillions of operations per second all jumbled together? We work at this bizarre intersection of brilliant minds, rapidly changing technology, and total improvisation.

Digging into this history made parts of my brain that have lain largely dormant since grad school start firing again. Analyzing product data for anomalies is great and all, but there's something especially satisfying about chasing down a reference through a mess of articles and books to find an under-appreciated decades-old source for something we now take for granted. For example: the first "product manager" job that I can find in software dates back to 1974 at Digital Equipment Corporation. That felt pretty cool.

I started writing, and after about two months, I found I'd written about 25,000 words on the history of software development methodology. There's still plenty more to research and write, but I want to share what I've got, however small the audience for something as arcane as the history of software development may be.

I've just released the first two full episodes (as well as a quick preamble) on the new show website, www.prodfund.com. There will be show transcripts and links to sources there for every episode. There's already some interesting stuff in those first episodes, if I dare say so myself:

  • Episode 1: Programming on mainframes, how NATO created "software engineering," and the origins of the dreaded Waterfall
  • Episode 2: Quality control, iterative development, and how fears of Soviet nuclear superiority created the cross-functional team

New episodes should come out weekly for the rest of the first season. I'd be honored if you check out the show and let me know what you think. You can subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Thanks!

Published by:

Jordan Phillips

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