During a tour of the Starbase, Elon talked about the process he had implemented at Tesla and SpaceX.

I found it insightful and very relevant to all product-centric organizations, so I compiled them here for quick reference in the future.

Step 1: Make requirements less dumb

Your requirements are definitely dumb.

It does not matter who gave them to you. It’s particularly dangerous if a smart person gave you the requirements because you might not question them enough. Everyone’s wrong (some of the time), no matter who you are.

The requirement must also come with a (person’s) name, not a department. If you want to ask about the requirements, you can’t ask the department; you have to ask a person. The person then must take responsibility for the requirement.

Step 2: Delete the part or process step

If you’re not occasionally changing the process, you’re not leading (or improving). Typically teams say “let’s add this part of the process in case we need it in the future.”, however, problem is that you can make the “in case” argument for just about anything.

You also can’t catch all edge cases, so reduce the scope, remove the parts you don’t need right now from the requirements.

Step 3: Simplify or optimize

The most common mistake a smart engineer makes is to “optimize a thing that should not exist”.

Everyone’s been trained since childhood to answer the question (convergent thinking). We aren’t trained to tell the teacher that their question is dumb.

Step 4: Accelerate cycle time

You can always move faster. Do not go faster until you’ve worked out the first 3 steps of the process.

Startups know this well, you need to improve the cycle time to get feedback as quickly as possible. Run experiments fast, break things fast, and move on.

Step 5: Automate

This should be the very last step in the process. Again, startups know this well: Do things that don’t scale first, figure out it’s the right thing to do, then automate it with a new process or software.

Watch Part 1 of the interview here, Elon talks about the process starting at 13:37

Starbase Tour with Elon Musk [PART 1]

ps: I’d equate Elon’s process to Ray Dalio’s principles.