We are told that successful companies have great products which must be built on a robust broad platform. However, there is some assembly required! CTOs must balance the delivery of competitive products against the delivery of their platform which will enable industry “domination”. Best of breed products must provide competitive features delivered on a strong broad platform. In this talk Dave will share his decades of experience building products and platforms (software and hardware).

He briefly describes the natural tension between products and platforms. These tensions ripple through all aspects from development from practices; technology and tool choices; through user experience; design; architecture and implementation. They constrain the functionality, delivery timeline and costs hence substantially impacts the software culture of the company. Dave discusses the numerous challenges and tradeoffs faced by product and engineering management as they seek to deliver best product for their customers while delivering the best platform for their business.