Why You Need to Kill Projects Before They Kill You - For The Interested

Why You Need to Kill Projects Before They Kill You

“The earlier your company can identify, avoid, and dispose of Dead Snakes, the faster you’ll be able to build new products or features your customer actually wants, and grow your revenue accordingly.”

Genomic data processing company DNAnexus has seen its revenue grow 300% in the last two years and credits that growth primarily to one key strategy — they started killing off their own projects.

This First Round Review article from the company’s CEO explains why you need to aggressively kill projects that aren’t going anywhere and offers suggestions of how to identify such projects.

His tips include to watch out for plans that are called “strategic” without being valuable, to kill products that don’t resonate with customers, and to empower employees to shed non-productive initiatives.