Google's approach to software development

Rakesh Agrawal presents an interesting summary of a talk by Carl Sjogreen describing Google’s approach to the software development process.

• Google Calendar was a relatively small project (3 engineers, 1 product manager).
• Google talk to real users (‘Grandma in NYC’) not techy geeks to find what users really want.
• Google ’eat their own dog food’. Lots of internal testing prior to public launch.
• Gap in the market. Lots of calendar products out there but none do what people want. Typical Google opportunity.
• Paper based calendars are the real competition.