What’s the most effective way to make real progress on your product?
One thing I’ve seen across multiple startups I’ve worked with: progress often gets stuck.
Endless planning. Too many async updates. Not enough actual momentum.
What’s been most effective in my experience?
A “war room”.
It’s a focused setup where the whole team works in sync- same space (or online Google Meet), full focus, no context switching. We’d usually run it in 2–3 sprints of 12 hours. I’ve seen other teams go even harder : 24, sometimes even 72 hours straight with rotating shifts. It’s intense, but the output is always worth it.
You ship more in 24 hours than you sometimes do in two weeks.
What’s worked for you when you really need to move fast?
Would love to hear 👇
114 views
Replies
IXORD
I think that for product development you need to understand whether the product is moving correctly and what update it needs. The team is the core of the product, but the right path is also important.
@ixord You’re absolutely right. Product development is the key.
We have async communication but daily meetups, 2 week sprints and deadlines. But what really helps to me is time pressure (paradox) :D
@busmark_w_nika Yes. I believe that time pressure and social pressure are major motivators. When I know I have to present something to someone, I also feel the need to move faster and make sure it’s high quality.
@byalexai It reminds me that this technique was mentioned in the book by Tim Ferris – The 4-Hour Workweek
@busmark_w_nika Good old Tim Ferriss. The guy who released so many hacks and inspired a generation of people to become digital nomads.
@byalexai True, I remember how I read most of this book while travelling by train for almost 5 hours :D
Jupitrr AI
We have notion sprint to track everyone's tasks every week. We also have catchup meeting where we discuss the progress. Your idea seems really interesting. How often do you do it?
@lakshya_singh Notion sprint is cool, but sometimes some tasks get postponed too many times into the future.
Big up for the “war room” idea!
For Escape Velocity AI, what helped me make real progress was setting tiny, non‑negotiable daily goals. Even one meaningful task shipped per day built momentum way faster than big plans left half‑done.
@andreitudor14 Can you give specific examples?
We’ve done war rooms before, but what really works for us is setting hard deadlines with external pressure, whether we're working towards a launch, big demo, legal milestone, whatever it was. Web accessibility isn’t a hype-driven space, so we have to create our own urgency, and when we do, output doubles.
@a11yexpert This is why I strongly advocate for “launching on Product Hunt” constantly.
Because developers always have a deadline.
Because the marketing team always has something to make noise about.
@byalexai Amen to that!
Sprinto
It does, and it did - we did exactly this for Sprinto Trust Center, we launched it on 8th June on PH. Sharing 1 such slack war room example..lol we used this for the launch.
Btw this works best for 100 % remote set up like our at Sprinto. Curious about Offline set ups, how do you solve for that @byalexai - the same ?
@cheerst Super cool, Tuneer!
It’s the same way – you work from one room for 6–8–12 hours. Usually, food and drinks are ordered for the whole team so you don’t have to think about such trivial things. And everyone works together in one space.
Sprinto
@byalexai absolutely - we use to do that so often at Deloitte.
Which one do you think is harder @byalexai to execute ? -> Online or offline -> It's Online for me : to many variables there
@cheerst depends on the style.
I prefer online - easier, but offline also has a lot of advantages
The “war room” mindset resonates even without an official launch, we’ve used this setup during prototyping phases or when unblocking a stagnant workflow.
But what’s made the biggest difference for us is tight alignment + ruthless prioritization:
One decision-maker per sprint to avoid ping-ponging on scope.
Short “working sessions” instead of endless async updates even 60 mins together can unblock a week’s worth of drift.
And clearly defining “done” before we start. It sounds basic, but it saves us from redoing half the work.
Sometimes the breakthrough isn't from working more, but from removing the noise.
@priyanka_gosai1 Yes. Having a leader is essential. Otherwise, everything gets diluted.
We made progress when we stopped building in isolation and started launching beta experiences with creators — even before full feature parity. Their feedback while listing auctions for brand deals shaped what mattered most. Now we ship faster with better alignment to market need.
2 weeks seems to be reasonable. But we set 1 week deadline every week.
We set goal and find way to implement, test and launch every week